LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DDDDSDE4flDfl 






''\. 



..^^% 



<p. * O » C 



0^ 






V^,-i 



A 






>'H.\ 



<*. 






aV-^ 



.>'^ 






./% 



"w^ 

.^^^^, 

♦ 



"■^..^^ 



.C 



..0' 






'^^ 



<;> 



-^^^^^^ 



■.s^^ 

.^'\ 



.<■'», 



o 



,V* '^•^0* 






V*^ A' . -A 0:, A. o '^ ^A 



"oV" 



.0- 



•i^ "^ -^^v^-"** ^' ** 












'bV" 






'^' 






>. ..%■» 



,«.>r. 







^^-^°^ 



4 o 



\ V^>^' ^^^-^^o' V^^*y' 






. Jjd 



^^c 



^-'AGTS AND ARGUMENTS 






SMMST THE ELECTION 



} E N E E A L C A S S 



WRIGS 



' rti-r.i^v? to the 



DEMOCRATS 



A P ''> 1. / T » O N I S T 



(^ATGHEAD, i.i': FTJLTON STREET, 



CT^O-O 



E^TEiiiD according to •ct of Congress, jb the year !> 
RUSSELL J-VilVIV. 
in the Cierk't Office of the District Court ^f rV ■ Suuthera T> 



FACTS AND ARGUMENTS 
AaAIMST THU ELECTION 

OF 

GENERAL CASS, 

Respectfully addressed to the Whigs and Democrats of 
all the Free States, 

BY AN ANTI-ABOLITIONIST. 

INTRODUCTION. 

In offering the following remarks against the extension of slavery 
over the present or future territories of the United States, and over the 
new States which may rise in them, as reasons against the election of 
General Cass, or General Taylor, to the Presidency, I wish, in the 
commencement, to preclude all misconception of my motives or design. 
I am not an abolitionist. Preferring no charges against any sect, or 
party, denominated abolitionists, suggesting no doubts of their honesty 
or philanthropy, and regarding as " the idle wind," the prejudices and 
animosities which their name excites among the ignorant, or the inter- 
ested, I doubt the expediency, or even practicability, of their remedy 
for slavery, immediate and unconditional emancipation. And I tho- 
roughly disapprove every attempt, design, or wish, to dissolve the 
Federal Union. United by community of origin, language, jurispru- 
dence, political institutions, and by that noblest of all human compacts, 
though still imperfect, the Federal Constitution, the people of the Free 
and Slave States are brethren and kindred. Hence, instead of being 
strangers, far less enemies, they should be united by community of 
interest and feeling. The North and South nobly sustained each other 
in the dark days of the Revolution. May they continue to sustain 
each other in Freedom and Fraternity, united by the ties of common 

destiny, 

" Till suns shall rise and set no more." 

But this Union cannot be maintained, if perverted to the extension 
and perpetuation of wrong. Nor can it be maintained, if perverted by 



cne secijon of the Confederacy, to an instrument of unjust and humiliat- 
ing domination over the other. About the wrong of slavery in the 
abstract, I will waste no argument ; it being a subject on which, in this 
age of light, the enlightened and disinterested cannot disagree. I urge 
nothing against the rights over slavery retained by the Old Thirteen 
States, and by Kentucky and Texas ; rights which, however con- 
demned by reason and Revelation, and by all human experience, and 
however improperly extorted by some of those States, and uni\ isely 
yielded by the rest, are securely anchored by the Federal Constitution. 
But because unhallowed cupidity has covered too much by Constitutional 
compromises, and because timidity or temporary interests have per- 
mitted their extension far beyond their original ground, the South must 
not be permitted to extend them indefinitely, and thus make the Union 
an instrument of evil. A government established for the protection of 
human rights, must not be perverted to hewing them down. Slavery, 
which never should have been carried beyond the original Thirteen 
States, and even there should have been loaded with burdens insuring 
its speedy extinction, must not be made by the South, the weakest por- 
tion of the Confederacy, the chief purpose of the Federal Government, 
a great National object of perpetuation and extension. For the Free 
States, union on such terms would be criminal. Nor must the South 
be permitted to dictate all the National policy, to control the National 
Government, to make all the National interests subservient to its own, 
and to regard the North, Middle, and West, a great majority of the 
Confederacy, as united with it for the sole purpose of executing its 
decrees. To the Free States, union on such terms would be degrading. 
In thus interfering with Presidential elections, I am no man's man; 
no man's champion, no man's assailant; have no personal end to pro- 
mote, no friendships or animosities to gratify. .My sole object is the 
exclusion of slavery from another square mile of territory. In pur- 
suit of this object, I appeal to all men of the Free States, " Whigs," 
"Democrats," "Abolitionists," all, without partisan distinction; 
and I make the appeal as neither " Whig," " Democrat," " Barn, 
burner," nor " Hunker," but solely as an American citizen, free from 
local or partisan prejudices, and seeking the permanent honor and 
prosperity of our Country, and ouk whole Country. 

Russell .Tarvis. 
JVew York, June 13, 184S. 



CHAPTER I. 

A GREAT battle must soon be fought, both at the polls, and in the 
halls of the Federal Legislature, between the slaveholders and those 
who would prevent the extension of slavery. The parties are arming 
for the contest, and the slaveholders, to achieve success, are deluging 
the country with false doctrines. The far seeing believers in human 
progress may feel secure in the ultimate triumph of right, because such 
is the decree of Providence. But will this absolve them from any 
proper efforts to accelerate that triumph ? Through their neglect, 
wrong may prevail for ages to come, as it has, through the neglect of 
their predecessors, prevailed for ages past ; and though right will 
surely come at last, yet for all the intermediate wrong which they 
might have prevented, and for all the suflering of its victims, they are 
responsible, at least to impartial posterity. This is the day of false 
docti'ines against human rights ; the day when opinions, not only in 
excuse, but in justification of slavery, are boldly avowed by those who, 
in the days of tlieir Revolutionary Fathers, would have blushed under 
the bare suspicion. Those who once condemned slavery as a deplorable 
evil, and lamented their inability to emancipate their country from its 
blighting influences, now boldl}^ defend it — in Congress, in the legisla- 
tures, and the press of the Slave States, and through politicians and 
aspirants in the Free States, as a salutary institution, a natural condi- 
tion, a Divine ordinance, sanctioned by Revelation ! And, as if this 
were not enough, they boldly insult the common sense of mankind, by 
proclaiming that, it is the best of all institutions for maintaining/rec 
government in purity and efficiency. Yes! the self-styled professors 
of that Democratic Republicanism which is founded upon the natural 
equality of rights, and iias the warrant of Revelation in the command 
to all to do as they would be done by, boldly urge their daily violation 
of these rights, of^ this injunction, as the corner stone of a government 
which claims such rights for its foundation. And while thus boldly 
preaching these doctrines, they denounce all attempts to refute them as 
a violation of their constitutional rights, as an invasion of their domestic 
hearths, as fraught with insurrection, massacre to themselves, and dis- 
solution to this glorious Confederacy. Did the poison of false doctrines 
infect slaveholders only, it might still find an antidote in the purer 
principles of the Free States. But the poison is doing its deadly work, 
in reconciling even the Free States to the guilt of slavery. Northern 
politicians, born and trained at firesides where slavery was ever 
regarded as a criminal violation of natural rights, a severe moral and 
political evil, gravely tell their constituents that it is necessary to the 
South ; that the country can be afflicted by greater evils than slavery; 
that dissolution of the Union, an evil still more formidable, will inevi- 
tably follow any attempt of the Free States to arrest its progress. 
When the principles of a nation are falling before corrupting influences ; 
when, through the seductions of interest, through dread of their respon- 
sibilities, a people renounce the pure sentiments, the high aspirations 
which once impelled and guided them, their institutions, however 



excellent, are of short duration. Freedom, God's gift to man as the 
instrument of developing his noblest attributes, of discharging his 
highest duties, cannot animate corrupt hearts, or guide perverted 
minds. It has no fellowship with selfishness; no congeniality with 
injustice. If the first of poets uttered eternal truth in saying that, 

" Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day 
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away," — 

so is eternal truth involved in the declaration, that, whoever robs 
another of his freedom, his social individuality, throws away more 
than half of his own worth. If without moral degradation, man cannot 
be enslaved, neither, without such degradation, can he be an enslaver. 
He cannot plunder, and be just. He cannot rob, and do as he would 
be done by. He cannot close his eyes to the injustice, the robbery, 
without moral perversion. Then, as this contest between right and 
might is speedily coming, and as right, though sure of ultimate triumph, 
may be temporarily overpowered, the duty of all who would contend 
for riglit, is to consider this danger of temporary defeat, and to spare 
no just efforts for an immediate, as well as a permanent victory. If 
the Free States are victors, they will arrest the progress, and prepare 
for the extinction of a baleful institution, which has long been in con- 
flict with their interests and their rights ; and the Slave States will 
finally reach the only safe ground, freedom, founded on universal 
equality of rights. If the Slave States prevail, their victory w ill 
endure for ages ; they will blast a large portion of this continent witii 
the plague of slavery ; use it for ruling the Free States with a rod of 
iron ; prepare for the extinction of slavery in blood, and for the seve- 
rance of the Union into hostile fragments, desolating each otlier with 
civil war. The Slave States will contend for the extension of slavery 
over new territory, as their only, yet sure instrument of supremacy in 
the Federal Government; and the Free States, if true to themselves, 
to the country, to posterity, to human rights, will oppose this extension, 
■AS th(ir only means of restraining a power which has been exerciscil 
against tiiem with continually augmenting severity, and which has 
never yet hesitated in sacrificing to its own objects, present or pros- 
pective, their interests or their rights. 

The following are some of the dcniamls preferred by the slaveholders. 

First. Whenever a Free State is admitted to the Union, a Slave 
State must bo admitted to balance it. 

Secondly. New States may enter the Confederacy without any con- 
ditions imposed by the Federal Government, excepting a republican 
Constitution ; or, in other words. Congress have no power to interdict 
slavery, as a condition of such admission. 

Thirdhj. The citizen has no right of petition to Congress upon the 
subject of slavery. 

Foitrtlih/. The Federal Government is bound to interpose with foreign 
governnients, fl)r the surrender of fugitive slaves. 

Fifthhj. Congress cannot prohibit slaveholders from establishing 
slavery in the Territories. 

Sixthly. The people of new territories cannot proiiibit slaveholders 
from establishing slavery among them. 

I find no foundation for either of these demands, in the Federal Con- 
stitution, or the Common Law, or the Laws of Nations; and in con- 



sidering the important questions involved in this subject, I must refer 
to the intentions concerning slavery, not only of the Convention which 
devised the Federal Constitution, and of the States which adopted it, 
but of the wise and patriotic generation which achieved the Revolution, 
from their first step to their last, for the rescue of their liberties. If 
we find, in every step of their progress, from the commencement to the 
consummation of that glorious enterprise, declarations of rights, and 
assertions of principles, entirely inconsistent with slavery, and which, 
practically applied in social and political relations, would abolish it 
completely and irrevocably, we must infer that, having achieved their 
political emancipation, they entered upon their peaceful duties of seif- 
government with no newly born, suddenly imbibed indulgence for 
domestic bondage. And if we find them, from their acknowledgment 
as a nation by the British government in 1783, to their departure from 
tiie Federal Convention in 1787, continually avowing principles and 
enacting laws against slavery, we must infer that, in their great work, 
perhaps their greatest, the Federal Constitution, they intended to leave 
no insidious constructions, no covert implications, against human rights. 
Our Revolutionary Fathers began their great struggle as British 
subjects; as inheritors of all the natural and conventional rights of 
Englishmen ; the rights which their ancestors possessed and brought 
with them on first landing upon American soil ; the rights of life, 
liberty, property, opinion, and speech, transmitted through that Saxon 
Common Law, enlarged by the Norman Conquest, confirmed by the 
Great Charter and its various renewals, which had come down, con- 
tinually improving, to their ancestors at the commencement of the 
seventeenth century, a guarantee for individual freedom, a barrier, 
a bulwark against social bondage. Slavery, in the sense in which we 
apply the term to the African race, had long ceased to exist in England, 
when the English colonists landed at Jamestown and Plymouth. And 
we must remember that these settlements were made in the reign of 
James I., when the principles and guarantees of political and social 
liberty were already well established in England ; and that, from this 
period, the English at home were involved in continual struggles for 
their rights, always terminating in their favor. The interval between 
the landing on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence in 1776, a period of one hundred and fifty-six years, had 
witnessed the overthrow of Charles I., the republican government of 
Cromwell, the restoration of Charles II. under new and enlarged gua- 
rantees for popular rights, the abolition of the remaining feudal tenures, 
the enactment of the present law of Habeas Corpus, the expulsion of 
James II. for his designs against popular rights, the Bill of Rights at 
the accession of William III., and the triumph of personal liberty in 
Wilkes under George III. And in all these popular triumphs did the 
colonists participate, every new guarantee for personal rights acquired 
at home, being their property as Englishmen. Nor must I overlook the 
various charters granted to the colonists at different periods, all recog- 
nising them as English subjects of the English crown, and consequently 
as invested with all the rights and privileges of Englishmen. Then, 
upon this foundation, the rights and privileges of Englishmen, did the 
people of the Old Thirteen Colonies stand at the commencement of the 
Revolution ; from this point did they start in that great enterprise. If 
then, domestic slavery were entirely inconsistent with the rights and 
privileges of Englishmen, we must infer that, in appealing to the Lord 



6 

God of battles in defence of these rights and privileges, they never 
could have contemplated its perpetuation or extension. 

A brief glance at the important proceedings of that period, will ena- 
ble us to settle this question. At various periods in 1774, before the 
first meeting of the Continental Congress, the people of Prince George, 
Culpepper, Nansemond, Surrey, Fairfax, Hanover, and Princess Anne 
counties, in Virginia, in meetings in their respective counties, declared 
that the importation of negro slaves and convict servants prevented the 
settlement of the Colony by freemen and useful manufacturers, and 
that they would thereafter import no more of such slaves or servants. 
On August 1st, 1774, the people of all Virginia assembled by delegates 
in Convention at Williamsburgh, and resolved that they would not, 
after November 1st following, import any slaves from Africa, the West 
Indies, or elsewhere, or purchase any imported by others. Jefferson, a 
delegate to this Convention, but prevented by sickness from attending 
it, sent to it a declaration of his opinions concerning slavery, of which 
the following is an extract : 

" The Abolition of slavery is the greatest object of desire in these 
colonics, wiiere it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But 
previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary 
to exclude all further imi>ortations from Africa. Yet our repeated 
attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by im}x>sing duties which 
might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Ma- 
jesty's negative ; he thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few 
African corsairs, to the lasting interests of the American States, and to 
the rightsof human nature, deeply wounded by this inflimous practice." 

On August 27, 1774, the people of North Carolina, assembled by 
delegates in convention at Newburn, adopted the following resolution : 
" We will not import any slave or slaves, or purchase any slave or 
slaves imported into this province by others, from any part of tlie world, 
after the last day of November next." 

But in June, 1774, before the meeting of these conventions, three 
months before the first meeting of the continental Congress, and a few 
weeks after the battle of Lexington, the Legislature of Rhcxle Island,- 
of ever brave, ever resolute, ever gallant, ever unquailing little Rhode 
Island, passLul an act prohibiting the slave trade. As all such acts of 
the Colonies had been invariably rejected by the British crown, the 
boldness of this little Colony iti thus braving British vengeance, within 
a few weeks after the battle of Lexington, and before the other Colonies 
had organized any general plan of resistance, is worthy of all commenda- 
tion. I gladly cite the preamble of this act, for the justice of its senti- 
ments, and for the severity of its rebuke lo those who trample upon na- 
tional rights. It is the following : 

" W/icrcas, the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the 
preservation of their own riglits and liberties, among which that of per- 
sonal freedom n)ust be considered the greatest, and as those who are 
desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty tlu-mselvcs, should be 
willing lo extend personal liberty to others, tJiereforc, c^c." 

Then follow the prohibitory provisions against the slave trade. 

On September '), 1774, tin* Continental C^ingress asseml)led, all the 
old States being represented excepting Georgia, which sent delegates to it 
in the folK)wing year. On October '20. 1774, this Congress adopted 
" Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union," saying : " We, for 



ourselves, and the inhabitants of the several colonies whom we repre- 
sent, firmly agree and associate under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, 
and love of our country, as follows : 

"Article 2d. We will neither import nor purchase any slaves imported 
after the first day of December next, after which time we will wholly 
discontinue the slave trade, and we will neither be concerned in it our- 
selves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manu- 
factures to those who are concerned in it." 

On July 6, 1775, the Continental Congress presented to the world a 
Declaration of Rights on taking up arms ; a declaration beginning with 
a sentence to which I would call particular attention, as it contains the 
fundamental principle on which slavery must stand or fall. It is the 
following : 

" If it were possible for men who exercise their reason to believe 
that the Divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human 
race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over 
othei's, marked out by His Infinite Goodness and Wisdom as the objects 
of a legal dominion, never rightfully resistible, however severe and 
oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from 
the Parliament of Great Britain, some evidence that this dreadful au- 
thority over them had been granted to that body." 

Here is a declaration in explicit terms, by the Continental Congress 
of 1775, representing States of which every one then held slaves, 
against the right, moral or political, of one portion of the human race 
to hold absolute property in another. It declares such unlimited do- 
minion inconsistent with humanity, loith reason, with reverence for the 
Creator. I want nothing more, for human language can express no 
more, as an unlimited condemnation of slavery. 

But the Continental Congress did not confine themselves to these 
declarations against slavery. On April 6, 1776, they prohibited the 
importation of slaves into any part of the confederacy. Three months 
after the date of this prohibition came tlie Declaration of Independence, 
proclaiming as self-evident truths, that, '■^ all men are created equal," 
are " endowed by nature with inalienable rights," and that among 
these inalienable rights are " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

We must remember that the Continental Congress which uttered 
this great declaration, had already proclaimed their rights as English- 
men ; rights which they described as transmitted from their ancestors ; 
and that, in construing these rights, we must refer to the acknowledged, 
well established rights of Englishmen at that period ; and to the well 
known fact, that, slavery was not then recognised by the laws of 
England, upon English soil. They were under no political necessity 
for making this declaration of fundamental principles ; for a declaration 
of their political rights, of their right to representation in the British 
Parliament, to establish local legislatures, to nationality, would have 
been amply sufficient for their purpose. The right of rebellion, the 
right of any community to throw off the political yoke of any other 
community, had been fully recognised by the Laws of Nations, 
as understood and practised by all the Christian nations of Eu- 
rope, and had been exemplified by Switzerland against the Ger- 
man Empire in 1308, by Sweden against Denmark in 1520, by Hol- 
land against Spain in 1580, and by Portugal against Spain in 
1640. The Continental Congress was composed of men most distin- 



guished, in each of the Colonies, for talent, experience in public busi- 
ness, social and political influence. Among tliem were the most emi- 
nent lawyers and statesmen of their time, meeting in that assembly 
with all the knowledge of "constitutional and international law, acquired 
during the controversies of the ten preceding years between the British 
Government and the Colonies, and the controversies and wars between 
the British and French Governments about American territory, which 
began in 1749, and ended a tew years only before the Declaration of 
Independence. As the war of 1756 was a contest of intellect as well 
as of force, of argument as well as of arm.s, of principles, precedents, 
and logic, as well as of battles and sieges, in all of which the Colonies 
were actively and conspicuously engaged, we cannot suppose that the 
Adamses, the Morrises, the Sliermans, the Livingstons, the Wolcotts, 
the Hopkinsons, the Dickinsons, the McLeans, the Lees, the Pendle- 
tons, the Wythes, the Rulledges, the Middletons, the most eminent 
lawyers and politicians of their day, would come out of this contest 
without careful investigation of the various questions which it involved, 
of national right, of international law. We must also remember that 
the disputes between the British government and the Colonies about 
their respective powers and rights, began in 17G4, twelve years before 
the Declaration of Independence ; disputes in which the Colonies were 
driven, in self defence, to every position alTurded by the British con- 
stitution, and finally to the original, natural, congenital right of self 
government. Can we suppose that such an assembly, composed of 
men thus thoroughly drilled in political law, under institutions fully 
recognising the freedom of speecli and the press, with faculties stimu- 
lated and enlightened by long controversies in which they had person- 
ally borne a conspicuous part, were ignorant of the ground which they 
occupied ? That such an assembly, thus coming before the civilized 
world in the name of a whole people, and solemnly appealing, in de- 
fence of their rights, to the common sense and justice of mankind, and 
to the Supreme Justice of Heaven, had not weighed well their words 
and knew not the force of their declarations ? They fully comprehend- 
ed every principle which they proclaimed, and were prepared to show, 
in their justification, every argument supplied by reason, Revelation, 
precedent, historical record. And thus prepared, they would have 
amply satisfied the civilized nations to which they appealed, by refer- 
ence merely to their rights as British subjects, and to the examples 
of successful and rightful rebellion in Switzerland, Sweden, Holland, 
and Portugal. They needed nothing more, for a full justification of 
their separation from the nation to which they had hitherto acknow- 
ledged allegiance, than a reference to their political rights, based on the 
merely conventional ftumlation of iMiglish Charters, English laws, 
and Swiss, Swedish, Dutch. Portuguese, and other precedents. All 
that tliey needed was a plain statement, based on foundations exclu- 
sively human, their conventional rights as British subjects, and their 
conventional right under the common Law of European nations, to 
establish a distinct nationality in defence of those rights. They were 
under no necessity of referring to first princip/cs, older than the govern- 
ment whence they derived tlieir coiiventional rights, older than any 
human government. Why then should they encumber their solemn 
declaration with references entirely cxtrani>ous ? With reference to 
principles older than their conventional rights .' Why should they go 
back to principles emanating from God, before an English foot ever 



touched this continent ? Aye ! Before a Saxon or a Norman foot ever 
touched the soil of England ? Because they intended to record their 
solemn protest against all tyrannies, all usurpations, all violations of 
rights. Because, in appealing to God and man for the justice of their 
cause, they intended to intrench themselves behind those principles 
which were designed, before the foundations of the world, for the go- 
vernment of its rational and accountable inhabitants. Because they 
intended to assert their rights, not only us Englishmen, but as men ; 
not only as oppressed colonists, but as rational and accountable subjects 
of the Lord God Omnipotent, the Author of all legitimate authority ! 
They appealed lothat Ruler against a// tyrannies, and in defence of na- 
tional, original, congenital, inalienable rights, and therefore asserted 
that all men were equal! ! And going back one year, to the declara- 
tion of the same Congress, on taking up arms against the British na- 
tion in defence of their rights as Englishmen, why, we may ask, did 
they not confine themselves to a statement of such rights, as in their 
first declaration upon establishing their colonial union, on October 20, 
1774 ? In that first declaration they merely asserted their rights as 
Englishmen, without uttering a word about their rights as men. Aiid 
as they had not, in making their second declaration, on July 6, 177.5, 
resolved on a separate nationality, but had merely resorted to arms in 
defence of their rights as an in'tegral part of the British nation, they 
required nothing more, to satisfy the world about the justice of their 
cause, than a reference to such rights only. But they go to the full 
length, in a single sentence, of declaring that slavery, in all forms, was 
condemned by reason, and forbidden by the Divine Governnient ! 

But as slavery then existed in every one of the thirteen colonies, 
why did not the Continental Congress expressly denounce it in the De- 
claration of Independence ? Why did they leave it as a standing and 
reproachful commentary upon all these declarations, proclaiming that, 
while they asserted the great principles of universal emancipation, they 
held thousands of their fellow creatures in the most degrading bondage ? 
They found slavery among themselves, imposed by the mother coun- 
try, against their earnest, incessant remonstrances. Their whole co- 
lonial history proved that it had been introduced among them, not with 
their consent, but in spite of their opposition ; that all their appeals to 
the British government against it had been contemned ; that all their 
colonial laws to prevent the introduction of slaves, and to promote 
emancipation among those already introduced, had been invariably re- 
jected by the British crown. The curse being fastened upon them, they 
could not suddenly throw it ofi". In Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, 
and Georgia, it was thoroughly interwoven with the social constitution, 
and could not be suddenly torn up by the roots. As domestic slavery 
was then extinct in all Christian Europe excepting Russia, and mano- 
rial slavery in all excepting Russia, Poland, Polish Prussia, and some 
States of the Austrian Empire, as both had been abolished for centuries 
in France, the Low Countries, Italy, most of Germany, and had scarcely 
ever existed in Spain and Portugal, the Continental Congress, in ap- 
pealing to civilized nations for the justice of their cause, could not al- 
lude to slavery as existing among themselves for a single day with their 
consent, without incurring the reproaches of all the nations to whom 
they thus appealed. They anticipated from all such nations the sig- 
nificant inquiry, " Why, in appealing to the world and the Creator in 
defence of the natural rights of mankind, do you not abolish domestic 



10 

slavery, in the very moment, and by the very act, bv wliich you 
burst the political bonds which bind you to Britain ? In proclaiming 
yourselves free, why do you not grant the boon to your own slaves ? 
Can you expect our sympathies, when you speak for liberty in the atti- 
tude of slaveholders, holding the sword in one hand, and the chain in 
the other ? They anticipated these commentaries upon their appeals 
to first principles, and knew that general, immediate emancipation, 
however due to abstract justice, was impracticable upon any otlier con- 
dition than intolerable evils to bond and free, and therefore forbidden 
by humanity. Hence their only resort was avoiding all allusion to the 
curs ■, regarding it as a monster of wliose presence they were painfully 
conscious, but with which they would not then deal according to its 
deserts. They therefore confined themselves to its implied condemna- 
tion ; a condemnation involving an implied promise to extirpate it event- 
ually, by a declaration of those principles with which it is thoroughly 
inconsistent, and before which it must eventually fall. Hence they 
proclaimed that property in man, unlimited dominion of one man over 
another, was inconsistent with the reason, and with the design of the 
Creator in the moral government of his creatures; that, all men were 
created equal, and endowed by nature witli inalienable rights to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was all that tliey could do, 
and they did it all. And they had the highest authority for this entire 
condemnation of an evil, by stating the general principle involving its 
removal, without specific allusion to its details. In the very midst of 
domestic slavery, of political despotism, of a social and political consti- 
tution whose enormities no tongue can adequately describe, whose 
head, guide, inspiring and ruling spirit could scarcely find a character- 
izing epithet in any modern language, in the very midst of Roman do- 
minion under the auspices of Tiberius, came One to preach and to 
teach condemnation of all tyrannies. He denounced not political ty- 
ranny by name, uttered naught against Roman laws or Roman govern- 
ors, declared not that property in man was unlawful, or that masters 
must emancipate their slaves. But He proclaimed two principles 
which involve all these condemnations, and before which, practically 
applied to the details of society, political or social, all tyrannies must 
vanish. He said that God teas no respecter of persons ; in other words, 
that, " all men were created equal ;" and that all men must do as they 
tcould be done by ; in other words, that, they must respect the natural, 
inalienable rights of each other to "lite, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness." Then as He denounced all tyrannies without naming them, 
by proclaiming the two fundamental, universal, immutable principles 
which condenmed them, so the Continental Congress, prevented by the 
irresistible pressure of surrounding circumstances, from condemning 
domestic slavery by name, confined themselves to proclaiming the fun- 
damental, universal, immutable principles that involve its condemna- 
tion and prohibition. 

Against all this cumulative evidence, how can we suppose that the 
Uniti'd States, in their infancy, before the acknowledgment of their in- 
dependence by their enemy, contemplated the extension of slavery, or 

did not look forward to its extinction ? 

But the war for independence being successfully concluded, the con- 
federacy were at leisure to examine ami regulate their domestic affairs, 
and to "provide new guards f^r their future security." The only 
Federal constitution then existing were the " Articles of Confederation," 



11 

adopted by the Continental Congress, on July 9, 1778. These were 
not the " Articles of perpetual union and confederation" which had 
been adopted by the Continental Congress on October 20, 1774. Un- 
der that first Colonial union was the Declaration of liidependence pro- 
claimed ; and after that great step, it still remained as the Federal con- 
stitution, or rather the Federal league or alliance of the States, till July 
9, 1778, when the " Articles of Confederation" were adopted by Con- 
gress, and presented to the States for their ratification. Two years af- 
ter this, on September 6, 1780, Congress recommended to all the States 
whose charters covered ungranted territory, to cede it to the confe- 
deracy for national purposes. The States without such territory had 
long urged this cession, saying that the lands acquired by the com- 
bined efforts of the States, ought to be their common property for their 
common use ; and some of the small States refused to accept the 
" Articles of Confederation," till this cession were made or promised. 
Among the States thus claiming territories were New Hampshire, 
which claimed Vermont, whose inhabitants had proclaimed it a State 
and adopted a constitution in 1777 ; New York, which claimed the 
same territory, and a portion of the North- Western Territory ; Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut, which claimed portions of the North- Western 
Territory ; Virginia, which claimed Kentucky, and the whole North- 
western Territory; North Carolina, which claimed Tennessee; and 
South Carolina and Georgia, which claimed the " Georgia Western 
Territory," now part of Alabama and Mississippi. Of the claimants to 
the North-Western Territory, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, 
and Virginia, three held slaves ; Massachusetts having emancipated its 
slaves by its constitution, in 1780. Congress, by their recommenda- 
tion to the States of September 6, 1780, having advised the cession of 
this territory to the Union, adopted a resolution on October 10, 1780, 
stating that, " The unappropriated lands which might be ceded or re- 
linquished to the United States, should be settled and formed into dis- 
tinct republican States, which shall become members of the Federal 
Union, and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independ- 
ence as the other States." This resolution shows that the settlement 
of these vast wildernesses was then foreseen; for no mind intelligent 
enough to compare that period with the past, and comprehend iiow 
the Thirteen United States had grown from the small settlement of Ply- 
mouth, James River, Philadelphia, and a icw other similar enterprises, 
could fail to foresee that yet other States, even mightier than their pa- 
rents, would spring up in those vast regions then inhabited by savage 
beasts and savage men. And the wise generation of that period, in these 
mighty settlements, looked forward to brethren and kindred, and not to 
vassals; to sovereign States, members of the confederacy, and not to 
provinces, coming to ask the Union on bended knees, how they should be 
governed. Having drawn the sword to hew down the pretensions of 
Britain, they could not conscientiously use it in hewing down the rights 
of-their future brethren of these new States ; and hence they provided that, 
as the Old and the New would be united by the ties of blood, they should 
be united by those of a common government, a common confederacy, 
all being equally free, sovereign, republican. Pursuant to this great 
design, conceived and insisted upon by the States which professed no 
claims to this territory, the claiming States responded affirmatively to 
this resolution of Congress, and ceded the territory to the Union ; New 
York and Virginia in 1783, Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1784. 



13 

The act of cession by Virginia, dated October 20, 17S3, provided that, 
" The territory ceded shall be laid out and formed into States, and the 
States so formed shall bo formed into republican States, and admitted 
members of the Federal Union, having the same rights of sovereignly, 
freedom, and independence as the other States ;" and that, *' The French 
and Canadian inhabitants and other settlers of Ka^^kaskias, St, Vin- 
cent's, and the neighboring villages, who profess theniselves citizens of 
Virginia, shall have their possessions and titles confirmed to them, and 
be protected in the enjoyment of their rights and liberties." In addi- 
tion to these stipulations, Virginia reconnnended that the territory, 
when settled, should be divided into three Stales. On July 7, 178t>, 
Congress applied to Virginia for an alteration of its condition concern- 
ing the number of Slates into wiiich the territory should be divided ; 
and on July 13, 1787, fully confiding in the ultimate assent of Vir- 
ginia to a division of the territory into five States, Congress passed the 
ever memorable ordinance for the government of this territory, which 
is now on the statute book of the United States, a perpetual compact 
between them and the five States of the Northwestern Territory, Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. 

Among the memorable epochs in the history of the United States, 
the adoption of this ordinance yields to none in importance. As a 
declaration of fundamental principles, it may well be placed beside the 
Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. It is gene- 
rally ascribed to Mr. Jefferson. I should be among the last to detract 
from the merits of this great apostle of human rights, great, even among 
the chiefs of the Revolution, the champion of that universal justice and 
philanthropy which, in the Revolutionary days of pure motive, high 
aspiration, and noble daring, sought the annihilation of social, as well 
as political bondage, the emancipation of the slave from his master, as 
well as the socially free colonist from his political oppressor. The 
author of the Declaration of Independence, the far-seeing purchaser of 
Louisiana, the uncompromising defender of right and opponent of 
wrong, he never failed to raise his voice in behalf of "the whip-galled 
slave," and against the Heaven-defying injustice that trampled u; on 
his natural rights. But Truth is above all things, and demands tlie 
honor of engrafting a decisive provision against slavery upon die 
ordinance of 17S7, for Rufus King, a deleirate in Conjrress from Mas- 
sachusctts. 

In 17S4, Mr. Jefferson, on a committee with Mr. Ilowell of Rhode 
Island, and Mr. Chase of Maryland, to report a bill for the government 
of the Northwestern Territory, reported an onlinance containing a pro- 
hibition of slavery after 185o. On April 19, 1784, Mr. Speight, of 
North Carolina, moved to strike out this provision ; and as the rules of 
Congress required a majority of the States to sustain a proposition, and 
as six States, New Hampshire, .Massachusetts, Rlmde Island, Connecti- 
cut, New York, and Pennsylvania, voted for Mr. Jelferson's proposition 
as New Jersey was divided, and as the remaining si.\ voted against it, 
the proposition was lost for want of a majority, and stricken out upon 
this motion of Mr. Speight. This brief report of Mr. Jefferson con- 
tained no provision for the equal distribution of inheritances according 
to the Common Law, no provision for education, no guarantees for 
personal or religious liberty. Tliesc provisions of the ordinance 
finally adopted were introduced by another Committee, after .Mr. Jef- 
ferson had left Congress. On March 10, 1785, he was appointed by 



13 

Congress, Minister to France, departed on his mission immediately, and 
did not return till 1789, two years after the adoption of this ordi- 
nance, and four years after the introduction of its provision against 
slavery. On March 16, 1785, a week after Mr. JefJerson's departure 
for France, Rufus King moved that the following proposition should 
be committed, as an instruction, to the committee on Western Terri- 
tory. 

" There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of 
the States described in the resolve of Congress of the 23d of April, 
1784, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party 
shall have been personally guilty, and that this regulation shall be an 
article of compact, and remain a fundamental principle of the consti- 
tution between the thirteen original States, and each of the States de- 
scribed in the said resolve of the 23d of April, 1784." 

This proposition, seconded by Mr. Ellery of Rhode Island, was sus- 
tained by all the States excepting Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, 
which opposed it, and Delaware, which was divided ; and tlius adopted 
by a majority o? one State, as an instruction to the committee on West- 
ern Territory, it remained in their hands till September, 1786. This 
committee, consisting of Messrs. Johnson of Connecticut, Pinckney 
of South Carolina, Smith of New York, Dane of Massachusetts, and 
McHenry of Maryland, then reported "an ordinance for the govern- 
ment of the Western Territory," containing Mr. King's proposition as 
it now stands on the Statute book of the United States, and substantially 
as presented by him on March 16, 1785. After a debate of several 
days, this report was referred to another committee, comprehending 
Messrs. Carrington and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, Dane of Mas- 
sachusetts, Keen of South Carolina, and Smith of New York, who 
reported it with slight modifications, in the handwriting of Mr. Dane. 
This last report, read on July 11 and 12 successively, and again on 
July 13, 1787, was adopted by the vote of every member of Congress, 
excepting Mr. Yates of New York. 

This biief history shows that, as the proposition of Mr. Jefferson w-as 
offered and lost in 1784, and as he left Congress for France on March 
10, 1785, one week before the proposition finally adopted was offered 
by Mr. King, and did not return till two years after its final adoption, 
we cannot claim for him the exclusion of slavery from the Northwest- 
ern States. Tills credit has been claimed, and by no slight authority, 
for Mr. Dane, who did not take his seat in Congress till November 
23, 1785, eight months after the introduction of Mr. King's proposition. 
And while Mr. Jefferson's proposition proves his earnest hostility to 
slavery, and is thus consistent with all his previous and subsequent 
proceedings relating to that institution, yet the Free States, and the 
advocates of freedom everywhere, may congratulate themselves on its 
early defeat in the Continental Congress ; for had it been adopted, the 
proposition of Mr. King would not probably have been offered, and if 
it had been, would still more probably have been rejected ; and thus 
the ordinance of 1787 would have contained a prospective, instead of 
an immediate prohibition of slavery. Mr. Jefferson's project tolerated 
slavery for seventeen years ; and as the institution already existed in 
every white settlement in the territory, the slaveholders already there 
would not have emancipated their slaves in view of this prospective 
prohibition ; nor would it have deterred slaveholders from emigrating 



14 

to this territory with tlicir slaves. And thus, when the time should 
arrive for this project to operate, the year 1801, the slaveholders of 
the territory, aided by the slave States, would probably liave been 
strong enouorh to procure a repeal of this prohibition. Sonie have sup- 
posed that Mr. Jefferson suggested the proposition afterwards otfcred 
by Mr. King. But as history furnishes no evidence of this, we can 
test its probability only by reference to facts ascertained. After the 
failure of Mr. JelTerson's prospective prohibition, would he have un- 
dertaken something still more difficult, a measure of immediate and 
unconditional emancipation ? Xo State voted against his proposition 
because it did not go far enough against slavery ; for it was supported 
bysi.x of tlie Northern and Middle States that afterwards sustained Mr. 
King's proposition ; they being glad to obtain even a concession thus 
imperfect. And if Mr. Jelferson was afterwards inspired by new 
hopes, and conceived the proposition offered by Mr. King, why did he 
not introduce it, and thus not only obtain the high fame due to its intro- 
duction, but arm it with his own iiiflnence over the Southern States ? 
If he conceived and prepared it immediately before his departure for 
France, and therefore could not await its disposition, why did lie not 
leave it as a legacy to Congress, to his country, knowing that it would 
be sustained by each of the States which had already sustained his 
unsuccessful proposition ? Massachusetts, one of the ceding States, 
had abolished slavery by its constitution in 1780, and liad sustained 
Mr. Jefferson's defeated proposition in 1784. Hence the proposition of 
Mr. King was precisely the effort that might have been expected from 
^Massachusetts ; and his long and distinguished political career shows 
that he was original enough to conceive, bold enough to offer such a 
proposition, and candid enough to award due credit, had he acted on 
the suggestion of Mr. Jefferson. 

This ordinance is important in showing that the Old Thirteen States 
in 1787, then united under the Federal Constitution of 1778, entertained 
no doubt about the power of Congress over all the territories; and that 
all the States then intended to prevent the extension of slavery. In 
ceding the North-Westcrn Territory to the Union, neither of the 
claiming States imposed any condition concerning slavery. As Mas- 
sachusetts had abolished slavery by Constitution in 1780, and Connec- 
ticut by Statute in 1784, they would have raised the question for the 
purpose of procuring a decision in their favor, had they entertained 
any doubts about the power of Congress over the subject ; for being 
opposed to slavery, thcj' never would have relinquished their claims 
to this territory, under any apprehension of its being delivered to that 
institution. And had the slave States entertained such doubts, they 
too would have raised the questit)n, if they wished to keep the territory 
open to slave property. But both Congress and the State Legislatures 
were silent on the subject till the cession was complete ; and tiien the 
very first act of Congress for the government of the territory closed it 
against slavery, and this act received an unanimous vote from every 
State in Congress, with the single exception of one delegate from New 
York. We want no stronger evidence of tiio acquiescence, by all 
the States, in the power of Congress over slavery in the territories, or 
of the wish among all the States at that time, to prevent the extension 
of slavery. 

But this ordinance settles a question still more important, in saying 
that a Congressional injiniction upon a territory against slavery, when 



15 

it shall become a Stale, does not restrain its sovereignly, in the sense 
of the term contemplated by the Old or the Nqio Federal Constitution. 
Under the Old Constitution, the sovereignty of the States was much 
more ample than it is under the present, even according to the broadest 
construction of modern interpreters. The recommendation of Congress 
to the ceding States, to cede this territory to the Union for the purpose 
of being " formed into distinct Republican States, which should become 
members of the Federal Union, and have the same rights of sovereignty, 
freedom, and independence as the other States," considered in connex- 
ion with this ordinance, shows that Congress did not regard slavery as 
incident to State sovereignty, and that, in guarranteeing State sove- 
reignty, it did not regard the right to establish slavery as one of its 
elements. The ordinance shows that a new State might still be 
sovereign like the other States, while for ever prohibited by the Union 
from establishing slavery. By the resolution of 1780, Congress 
avowed the intention of establishing sovereign members of the Confede- 
racy in this territory. Yet by the ordinance of 1787, Congress 
perpetually prohibited the States that might be thus founded, from 
establishing slavery. The fifth article of this ordinance provides for 
the division of this territory into States, and for their admission into 
the Union " on an equal footing with the other States in all respects 
whatever;" and the sixth article imposes a perpetual prohibition upon 
such States, against slavery or involuntary servitude excepting for 
crimes. Congress saw no contradiction in these two provisions. All 
the delegates, with a single exception from New York, declared that a 
perpetual interdiction of slavery was no infraction of State sovereignty, 
or of the " equal fooling in the Union" of all the Stales. And Virginia, 
one of the ceding States, assented to this right in Congress. By its 
Statute of October 20, 1783, Virginia not only transferred this territory 
to the Union, but stipulated that, " The Territory ceded shall be laid 
out and formed into Stales, and the States so formed shall be formed 
into republican Stales, and admitted members of the Federal Union, 
having the same rights of sovereignly, freedom, and independence, as 
the other States." And by its statute of December 30, 1788, one year 
and five months after the date of this ordinance, Virginia acceded to 
the request of Congress about the division of the territory, and thus 
ratified all that Congress had previously done for it, including this 
interdiction of slavery. 

This ordinance also establishes the principle, that, under the Consti- 
tution and laws of the Union, and even under those of the several 
States, slaves are not necessarily "properly" or "possessions," and 
that the right to hold slaves is not necessarily included in the terms 
" rights and liberties." At the time of cession, the territory contained 
some settlements of slaveholders, and particularly one at Fort St. 
Vincent, near the mouth of the Wabash, and another at Fort Kaskaskias, 
near the junction of the Kaskaskias and Mississippi. Virginia, by its 
Act of Cession of October 20, 1783, stipulated that, " The French and 
Canadian inhabitants and other settlers of Kaskaskias and St. Vincent, 
and the neighboring villages, who profess themselves citizens of Vir- 
ginia, shall have their possessions and titles confirmed to them, and be 
protected in the enjoyment of their rights and liberties." By this 
ordinance of July 13, 1787, Congress established in the territory the 
rules of the Common Law for the descent, conveyance, and testamentary 
disposition of property, as more consistent with Republican principles 



16 

than the ohl French laws then prevailing there, with an exception 
"saving to the French and Canadian inhabitants of the Kaskaskias, St. 
Vincent, and the neighboring villages, who have heretofore professed 
themselves citizens of Virginia, their laws and customs now in force 
among them, relative to the descent and conveyance of property." 
Did Virginia, by this saving clause in its act of cession, or Congress 
led by lliis saving clause in the ordinance, contemplate the security of 
these settlers in the slave property then held by them, or suppose that 
the ordinance, in prohibiting slavery in the territory, operated prospec- 
tively ? Thev did not. The ordinance directly abolished slavery, 
immediately and unconditionally emancipated all tlie slaves then in the 
territory ; and to escape this immediate operation, some of the settlers 
moved, with their slaves, into Kentucky, then an independent State, 
and Louisiana, then a French Colony. They could not have carried 
their slaves into Virginia, that State having enacted a law in 1786, 
prohibiting the further introduction of slaves, and declaring free all 
imported contrary to such act. And after the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution, some of these settlers, inhabiting tiie Counties of Randolph 
and St. Clair, in the present State of Illinois, presented a petition to 
Congress for the repeal of the sixth article in this ordinance, and for 
an act to authorize slavery in the territory ; which petition teas rejected. 
Virginia made no complaint against this operation of the ordinance, 
but on the contrary, ratified and confirmed ii nearly eighteen months 
afterwards, by the statute of December 30, 1768. 

This ordinance not only abolished and for ever prohibits slavery in 
this territory, but impliedly asserts the right of Congress to abolish and 
prohibit slavery in all territory that might subsequently become the 
property of the Union, unless it were restrained by the express condi- 
lions of such subsequent acquisition. When this ordinance was 
enacted, the North-Western Territory was the only territorial property 
of the Union, and therefore the only domain to which Congress could 
extend these great principles. Kentucky and Vermont, admitted to 
the Union after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the first on 
February 4, the second on March 4, 1791, had never been ceded to 
the Union as territories. Tennessee was not ceded by North Carolina 
till 17^9, nor the (Georgia Western Territory by South Carolina and 
(Georgia, till 1797. Then as the Nnrth-Western Territory was all'thc 
ground which this ordinance could then cover, I feel justified in saying 
that it was designed to cover the whole ground, to establish a principle 
and a precedent for all future acquisitions of territory. This construc- 
tion is fortified by the provision of the ordinance concerning fugitive 
slaves, which says that, " any person escaping into the same (terri- 
tory), from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the 
original States, such fugitive may be lawfully claimed, and conveyed 
to tlie person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." This 
provides for the surrender of fugitive slaves, o/j/y when claimed by the 
original States, the Old Thirteen. Hence if slaves should escape into 
this territory from any New State, they could not be claimed under this 
proviso ; and if Kentucky or Tennessee had been admitted to the Union 
after the adoption of this ordinance, and slaves had escaped from either 
of them into this territory, they would have been emancipated. And 
the admission of both was nnticipat(>d in 1787. Kentucky separaterl 
from Virginia by their mutual agreement in 178.'), after a dis- 
cussion upon the question of separation for several years previous ; 



17 

and thus was it an independent State for six years before its ad- 
mission, and for two years before the adoption of this ordinance. 
In 1784, Tennessee separated from North Carolina without its permis- 
sion, and assumed to be the State of Frankland. But it resumed its 
territorial position in 1788, and was ceded to the Union in 1789. Thus 
when this ordinance was adopted, was the admission of these two States 
anticipated ; yet did Congress declare that slaves escaping into the 
North Western Territory from either of them, or from any part of the 
Union excepting the original Thirteen States, should not be reclaimed. 
And the delegates in Congress from all the slave States, in voting for this 
ordinance, assented to this limitation of the right of reclamation ; and 
Virginia, of which Kentucky had then recently been a part, a colony, 
a child, also assented to it by the statute of December 30, 1788 ; and 
each of the Southern States afterwards ratified this ordinannce by sta- 
tutes, and thus assented to all its principles. Thus in reviewing the 
proceedings of the Federal Government concerning slavery, from the 
first meeting of the Continental Congress on September 5, 1774, to the 
adoption of this ordinance on July 13, 1787, we find an explicit con- 
demnation of this institution, and a determination to prevent its exten- 
sion, and also find each of the slave States, by ratifying these proceed- 
ings, fully sustaining these views. 

I will now show that, in the convention which devised the present 
Federal Constitution, all the States, excepting two, were animated by 
the feelings, inspired by the principles, which, in connexion with sla- 
very, characterized the Continental Congress. And I will here add 
that Vermont prohibited slavery by constitution in 1777, Massachusetts 
by constitution in 1780, New Hampshire by constitution in 1784, 
Pennsylvania by statute in 1780, and Rhode Island and Connecticut 
by statute in 1784. 

In January, 1786, the Legislature of Virginia, upon motion of Mr.. 
Madison, appointed delegates "to meet such delegates as the other 
States might appoint," to devise some uniform system of commercial 
laws. Delegates from five States only met at Annapolis in Septem- 
ber, 1786, too much confined by instructions from their respective 
States, to effect the purpose of their assemblage. But they agreed' 
upon a report to their respective States, representing the defects of 
their Federal system, and recommending another convention for its 
revision, to meet at Philadelphia on the second of May following. The 
convention whicli assembled upon this recommendation, was the ever- 
memorable body which devised the present Federal Constitution. It 
was composed of distinguished patriots and statesmen of the Revolu-- 
tion, who immediately gave a promise of the wisdom that would govern, 
their deliberations, by electing Washington for their President. Among . 
its members from Maryland,"Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, were 
McHenry, Madison, Speight, Rutledge, Pinckney, names anything but 
obscure in the history of "our country, and one of which, at least, no- 
American siiould pronounce without reverence. In Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, and North Carolina, opposition to slavery was then extensive, 
especially among the enlightened, and was boldly proclaimed by men 
who had been conspicuous in their States Legislatures, who had signed 
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1778, and 
were then members of this convention. Among the distinguished men 
in these States then most earnest in opposing slavery, were Washing- 

2 



18 

ton, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Wythe, Pendleton, Lee, Mason, Ran- 
dolph, Dawson, Innis, Tyler, Luther Martin, Iredell, Galloway. 

Amid opposition to slavery thus exhibited in declarations and acts 
throuffh thirteen years, opposition creditable alike to the statesmen, the 
moralists, and the j)atriots of the Revolution, did the Federal Conven- 
tion assemble in 17b7, to devise a new constitution for the Union. The 
Confederation of 1776 was more a league than a government; more 
an alliance of independent nations, thin a fusion of States into one na- 
tion. This league had been tried and found wanting ; and the very 
object of this new convention was an union more perfect, under the 
guarantee of a national government. Can we suppose that the people 
of the United States, in thus assembling in solemn convention, to esta- 
blish a government both national and federal, to secure the very prin- 
ciples which they had proclaimed, and for which they had contended, 
throughout the Revolution, intended to confine their beneficent institu- 
tions to one race only of their fellow men ? That, having proclaimed, 
in the very commencement of their quarrel with the British Empire, 
their entire dissent from and abhorrence of the doctrine, that, God ever 
designed a part of the human race to hold absolute property in and un- 
bounded power over others ; that, having charged as a crime against 
the parent country, the establishment of slavery among them against 
their earnest and continual remonstrances ; that, having, during the 
whole contest, enacted various laws against the slave trade, and, after 
the contest, abolished the slavery then existing, and prohibited all fu- 
ture slavery, in the territory acquired by the whole Confederacy as the 
nursery of new Stales ; that, having done all this, and being then 
engaged in the awfully responsible work of establishing a national and 
federal government for the security of their natural rights ; they in- 
tended to exclude for ever, a certain portion of their fellow beings from 
all participation in its blessings? Can we suppose that, after having 
said and done all this, they intended to present for the approbation of 
the civilized world, the solemn mockery of a /rce constitution, founded 
upon chains that were to bind a portion of their fellow creatures in 
hopeless, everlasting bondage? To suppose that an assemblv contain- 
ing such men as John Langdon, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, 
William Patterson, Franklin, Mifllin, Clymer, Robert Morris, Dicken- 
son, Madison, with Washington at their head, intended to come before 
their own generation, to stand before all posterity, uttering solemn and 
hypocritical professions, with a charter of human rights in one hand, 
and the fetters of unlimited, interminable bondage in the other, is an 
insult to their memory, to the common sense of mankind, and to the 
Eternal Justice which they invoked. No! They made no false pre- 
tences ! They never intended " to keep the word of promise to the ear 
and break it to the hope.'.' They spoke sincerely, truly, and intended 
to be understood as they spoke. And what did they say ? Precisely 
what had been said substantially by the Continental Congress, from 
their first meeting on September ">, 1774, to their adoption "of the cele- 
brated ordinance against .slavery on July 13, 1787, that, their grand 
object was to cslah/ish justice, and secure the h/cssiti^s of lihcrlii to them- 
selves and their posterity. Their solenni declaration begins tiius: — 

" We, the ])eople of the United States, in order to form a more per- 
fect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the 
common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings 



of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this 
Constitution for the United States of America." 

What did the Convention mean by justice ? Thej^ meant, in part, 
what had been signified by the declarations of distinguished men, by 
the declarations and acts of the Continental Congress, by the resolu- 
tions adopted in county conventions and State conventions, by the 
acts of State Legislatui'es, by the declarations and provisions of State 
constitutions, during the whole period between the first meeting of the 
Continental Congress, in 1774, and the meeting of this Federal Con- 
vention in 1787, already referred to, and all against slavery, that, 
slavery was unjust, and should neither extend further nor endure for 
ever. 

And what did the Convention mean by ihe blessings of liberty for 
themselves and their posterity? Can we suppose that, after slavery 
had beea denounced by the representatives of the whole confederacy, 
from the commencement to the termination of the Revolutionary strug- 
gle, and in the first laws enacted by Congress for the government of 
the territory first possessed by the Union, the Convention intended to 
confine " the blessings of liberty" to a portion only of the national 
population ? Objectors may say that this Convention acted only for 
the American nation, while my doctrine would suppose them to act for 
all mankind. While admitting that, in mentioning the blessings of 
liberty, the Convention confined the application of the phrase to the 
United States, I urge that, they intended to apply it to all within the 
United States, without distinction. In providing for these blessings, 
while they could not go beyond the United States, excepting by offer- 
ing an example, they could comprehend, for they had the requisite 
power, all within the United States, of whatever race, bond or free. 
1 do not mean that they intended to make the Federal Constitution 
operate as an act of immediate or general abolition. They had no such 
power over slavery in the States. All that I mean, and vvhich I dis- 
tinctly assert, is that the Convention of 1787, in framing the Federal 
Constitution, contcjnplatcd, expected the gradual diminution and not 
remote final extinction of slavery, and designed, to prevent its extension. 

But if the Convention designed all this, why was not the principle 
of emancipation under the auspices of the Federal government, distinct- 
ly avowed in the Constitution ? This question is easily answered. 
The people of the United States, in both their Federal and State as- 
semblies, had already exonerated themselves from the guilt of estab- 
lishing slavery, by charging the establishment to the real authors of 
the mischief, the British Government. They also knew that the evil, 
though of tremendous magnitude, could not be easily cured ; that, 
while emancipation was an easy task in New Hampshire, Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, it was not so in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina. In 
these three Slave States, the poisonous roots of the evil were inter- 
woven with those of the whole social constitution, and therefore could 
not be hastily torn up. And all knew that the States had not intended 
to surrender to any Federal Government, and therefore had not sur- 
rendered to the Convention of 1787, any control over their internal 
administration. Therefore the Convention could not provide, in the 
Constitution, for the abolition of slavery in the States, immediate, gra- 
dual, or prospective. But the Constitution could provide for the im- 



20 

mediate, unconditional abolition of the slave trade, foreign and domestic, 
between each State and any foreign State, and between each State 
and every other member of the confederacy. Then why did not 
the Convention exercise this ample power, and proclaim to the world 
the sincerity of their professions in favor of thai freedom which they 
had already pronounced a natural, inalienable right, and of their 
demmciutions against that African Slavery imposed, by the British 
Government, upon their Colonial helplessness ? The answer to this 
question introduces a dark page in our history, and shows whence all 
the bitter waters of slavery have flowed since the establishment of the 
Federal Constitution. South Carolina and Georgia are responsible for 
the awful increase and present extent of this deplorable evil, and for 
all the burdens wiiich it has imposed upon the country during the last 
sixty years. But for South Carolina and Georgia, not another slave 
State would have been added to the Old Thirteen ! And Kentucky, 
Tennessee, iMississippi, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, and Ar- 
kansas, would now have been able to boast with Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
Michigan, and Wisconsin, that, the foot of no slave polluted their soil, 
that, it was trodden only by freemen, that, no chains rattled within those 
free, sovereign, independent States, entitled, in perfect equality with 
the original States, to the rights of freedom, sovereignty, and in- 
dependence. 

This is a grave charge against two members of the Revolutionary 
Confederacy who well performed their part in struggling for national 
independence. But it is not made without authority. As the Old 
Thirteen States, from the commencement of the Revolution, had 
exercised separately, or by a majority of two thirds in the Continental 
Congress, all power over commerce, their delegates in the Convention 
were unwilling to surrender this power to the Federal Government 
under a new constitution, excepting through a similar majority ; and 
no States in the Convention so strenuously contended for this reservation, 
as South Carolina and Georgia. They saw that conmieree involved — 
the slave trade ; that, the surrender to a bare majority, of the power to 
regulate commerce, would enable a bare majority to prohibit the slave 
trade immediately ; and they saw in the delegates from all the other 
States, and especially in those from Virginia, a cordial concurrence in 
such imm* diutc prohibition. And they had resolved upon retaining 
this diabolical IrafFic, and would not consent to its prohibition at any 
time, upon any terms! Here then were the elements of discord. 
Eight States, including South Carolina and Georgia, among the twelve 
represented in the Convention, for Rhode Island sent no dehgates, 
would not yield the regulation of commerce to a bare majority in Con- 
gress ; ten States would not consrnt to a continuance of the slave trade ; 
and South Carolina and Georgia, then called the Southern States in 
contradisJiction from all the rest, would not assent to any abolition of 
this criminal traffic. During four months were these two subjects 
under iliseu.ssioii in the Convention ; and during three of the four did 
eight States, including South Carolina and Cieorgia, vote to subject the 
(Congressional power over commerce to a majority of two thirds. At 
hiigth a compromise was eflected, by the assent of the ten Northern 
States to a temporary toleration of the slave trade, and the assent of 
tlie two Southern States, which, in the language of those days, signified 
only South Carolina and (Jeorgia, to a prohibition after such temporary 
toleration, and to the power of a majority in Congress over commerce. 



21 

In other words, for the privilege of the slave trade for twenty years, 
the two Southern States assented, though reluctantly, to the power of 
a bare majority in Congress to regulate commerce ; and for this power 
over commerce, the ten Northern States yielded to the two Southern 
the privilege of the slave trade for twenty years. The two Southern 
States made this concession of the slave trade for twenty years, an in- 
dispensable condition of their continuance in the confederacy. Mr. 
Madison, a member of the Convention, is good authority on this sub- 
ject ; and while representing a slave State, he was, in common with 
Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Wythe, Lee, Pendleton, all the great 
lights of Virginia in those days of foresight, self-sacrifice, and mutual 
concession to common good, a stern condemner of slavery as a violation 
of natural rights, and a corruptor of morals and manners. In a speech 
in the memorable Convention of Virginia to which was referred the 
Federal Convention, he says, " The Southern States (an expression 
then applied exclusively to South Carolina and Georgia,) would not 
have entered into the Union of America, without the temporary per- 
mission of the slave trade. And if they were excluded from the Union, 
the consequence might be dreadful to them and to us. We are not in 
a worse situation than before. That traffic is prohibited by our laws 
(referring to the law of Virginia of 1786), and we may continue the 
prohibition. The gentlemen from South Carolina and Georgia argued 
in this manner ; ' We have now liberty to import this species of pro- 
perty, and much of the property now possessed, has been purchased, 
or otherwise acquired, in contemplation of improving it by the assist- 
ance of imported slaves. What would be the consequence of hindering 
us from it 1 The slaves of Virginia would rise in value, and we 
should be obliged to go to your markets.' I need not expatiate (con- 
tinues Mr. Madison) on this subject. Great as the evil is, a dismem- 
berment of the Union would be worse. If these States should disunite 
from the other States, for not indulging them in the temporary con- 
tinuance of this traffic, they might solicit and obtain aid from foreign 
powers." 

Thus for the purpose of procuring slaves cheap, they refused to remain 
in the Union without the slave trade, and not only threatened, as they 
have more than once since, to establish a separate confederacy, but 
even intimated, as South Carolina did in her days of nullification, a 
desiorn to unite with some foreign power. Would they have found 
any foreign power ready for such union ? The British government, 
then smarting under the recent loss of their colonies, would have 
gladly improved any opportunity for sowing division among them, in 
the hope of reaping the harvest of reconquest. And this British 
Government, then and previously the great patron of the slave trade, 
which had furnished slaves to all the Spanish Colonies, and which had 
waged more than one war against Spain, to extort from her the privi- 
lege, and which had forced the abomination upon the American colo- 
nies in their helpless infancy, would have rejoiced in obtaining an 
assiento contract* from South Carolina and Georgia. The just, the 
philanthropic, the sagacious Madison and his associates foresaw these 
direful evils ; and hard as was the alternative between them and the 
(Tuilt of the slave trade for even twenty years, they could not hesitate 

* By the Treaty of Utrecht, ia 1713, Spain granted to Britain the exclusive 
right to supply the Spanish Colonies with African slaves ; the British agreeing to 
furnish 4S00 annually. This stipulation between Spain and Britain was called the 
assiento contract. 



22 

in preferring tiie latter. A period to llie abomination, though yet dis- 
tant, was a great victory over the Southern States, which had insisted 
on retaining it witliout liniitation ; and seeing in all around them, ex- 
cepting South Carolina and Georgia, a deep and settled hostility to this 
institution in the abstract, a stern resolution against its extension, and 
an earnest hope and belief in the speedy commencement, in the slave 
States, of the schemes for its extinction which had been already 
adopted in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, 
Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, they took for granted tiiat when the 
twenty years of permission should expire, the whole Union would 
unanimously and joyfully apply the prohibition. And I must add as 
another justification, or rather palliation, of their assent to this tempo- 
rary permission, that, excepting South Carolina and Georgia, every 
member of the confederacy had already prohibited the introduction of 
foreign slaves within its own territory. On one side they saw separa- 
tion, foreign alliance, civil war, and all their accumulating horrors, 
involviii<r the destruction of that free republic which they had estab- 
lished amid the toils, privations, sacrifices, sufferings, and blood of the 
Revolution. On the other they saw peace, mutual confidence, aug- 
menting strength and prosperity, a free constitution, an example 
to the world, the hope of the oppressed in all climes, marred and 
stained and disfigured by a toleration of the abominable slave trade for 
twenty years, but still brightened and cheered by the prospect of its 
extinction at the end of that period, and the probable commencement of 
some schemes of emancipation. Tiiese were the best terms for 
human rights which South Carolina and Georgia would grant ; and 
the oilier States preferred them, though far short of their philanthropic 
yearning, to the horrors of the alternative. They got all for freedom 
within their reach ; and on South Carolina and Georgia must fall the 
censure due to their getting no more ! And let us remember that the 
Continental Congress and the Federal Convention were in session in 
Phihulelphia at the same time, and that the celebrated ordinance of 
July 13, 17S7, abolishing and for ever prohibiting slavery in the North- 
western Territory, was unanimously adopted by the Continental Con- 
gress, in the very midst of the long debate in the Convention uj)on the 
question of slavery. Hence we must infer that the members of each 
body, comprehending the most distinguished men of the country, very 
freely interchanged "their views upon this vitally important question. 
If then, even tlie members of Congress from South Carolina and Geor- 
gia voted for this ordinance, while the members of the Convention from 
the same States contended for the privilege of the slave trade to the 
existing States, we must infer that no person, in either body, then 
doubted the determination of the whole country to prevent the exten- 
sion of slavery, or doubted the full power of the Union under the then 
existing Constitution of 177S, or the expediency of arming the Union 
with full power under the constitution then in progress, over slavery 
beyond the limits of each State then existing. And what was done 
with this celebrated ordinance, afler the adoption of the present consti- 
tution ? Was it i-epealed as the exercise of a power in the Federal 
Government which that constitution did not concede ? At the first 
session of the first Congress under the new constitution, this ordinance 
was ratified by a special act, which received the vote of every member 
of the House and Senate, with a single exception from New York, and 
the signature of President Washington, then fresh from the Convention 
which had spent four months in adjusting the question of slavery. 



CHAPTER II. 

Having traced the history of slavery, from the commencement of the 
Revolution to the clause of the Federal Constitution concerning the 
slave trade, I will now consider the signification which the Convention 
of 1787 attached to this clause. Its terms are the following: 

"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States 
now existing may think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the 
Congress, prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight ; but 
a tax may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars 
for each person." Art. i., Sec. ix. 

This means, first, that, migration and importation, thus used disjunc- 
tively, refer to two things, the domestic and foreign slave trade. 

Secondly, that, the States then existing, which were the Old Thirteen, 
should not be restrained in this migration or importation, excepting by 
a limited tax on the importation, till the year 1808. 

Thirdly, that, the States which might be established before 1806, 
might be immediately restrained from such traffic. 

Fourthly, that, after 1808, such traffic could be prohibited to all the 
States, new or old. 

I. I say that migration refers exclusively to the domestic, and im- 
fortation exclusively to the foreign slave trade. 

According to a rule of construction recognised in the tribunals of all 
civilized nations, and so recognised because it is founded in common 
sense, the terms of a written instrument must be construed according to 
their ordinary acceptation by the community in which the instrument 
is to operate ; and every term used must be carried into effect in such 
sense, as indicating the maker's design, and not regarded as used care- 
lessly, with no or an erroneous meaning. Were migration and impor- 
tation used, in this clause of the Constitution, synonymously 1 As words 
of precisely the same import 1 To signify one and the same intention 
in the makers of the instrument? They never have been so used, 
either in common parlance, or by acknowledged authorities in philolo- 
gy ; and hence such construction is forbidden by custom and etymolo- 
gy. The Convention were very precise in the use of terms, and did 
not intend to express any idea by more than one, when one was regarded 
as ample. They were among the scholars, the lettered men of their 
day, under a sense of deep responsibility, engaged in a work whose 
magnitude could not be estimated too highly, and in which the precision 
of language excluding variety of construction was deeply important. 
They were the delegates of twelve different States, each apprehensive 
of conceding too much of State sovereignty to a Federal Government. 
Hence these delegates knew that when their work should be presented 
to the different States, it would meet with opposition in some, perhaps 
in all, and upon almost every imaginable ground. The restraints im- 
posed by the States upon the delegates who had assembled at Annapolis 
a few months before, and who were now in this very Convention, had 
taught them to believe that one of the most formidable objections to any 
plan of Federal Government, would be the ambiguity of its terms, and 
consequently its power, through construction, over the rights which the 
States never intended to concede. The Federal Constitution then in 
operation, though adopted by Congress on July 9, 1778, had not been 



24 

ratified by all the States till March 1, 17S1 ; Maryland, the last of the 
Thirteen that yielded, having ratified it on that day. Then can we 
suppose that such men, acting under such impressions, would leave to 
the ambiguities, the uncertainties of repetition and tautology, those 
rights, State or Federal, whose security essentially depended on preci- 
sion of language ? We must suppose that they not only knew precisely 
what tiiey intended to say, but thoroughly understood the best mode of 
saying it. And for this rational, almost necessary inference, I would 
state that the Federal Constitution, after being thoroughly analysed and 
digested in substance, was referred to a special committee, for the pur- 
pose of being freed from all superfluous words, of being clothed in 
phraseology the most definite and precise, the best fitted to exclude all 
uncertainties of construction. And we must take for granted that the 
members of this committee were selected with especial reference to their 
qualifications for such task, and therefore that, they were among the 
most gifted for it in the Convention. And we may also take for granted 
that they were well (jualilied for such task ; for we may vainly search 
all the ri'cords of English literature, political, legal, ecclesiastical, mili- 
tary, miscellaneous, even mathematical, for a document superior, in 
precision of language, to the Federal Constitution. 

Then in what significations were these terms used ? Some have ur- 
ged that the terms Jiiigration, importalion, persrms, were applied by the 
convention to the voluntary immigration of foreigners to the United 
States, and not to the importation of slaves from abroad, or their trans- 
fer from one State or Territory of the Union to another. But the long 
continued debates in the Federal Convention, and those in the Slate 
Conventions to which the constitution was referred, leave no doubt upon 
this subject. In the Federalist, Mr. Madison refers to this obji-ction in the 
following terms : — " Attempts have been made to pervert this clause into 
an objection against the constitution, by representing it, on one side, as 
a criminal toleration of an illicit practice ; and on anotlier, as calcu- 
lated to prevent voluntary and beneficial emigrations from Europe 
to America. I mention those misconstructions, not with a view to give 
them an answer, for they deserve none, but as specimens of the man- 
ner and spirit in which some have thought fit to conduct their opposition 
to the proposed Government." This construction supposes that ?/«- 
gration and importalion were used by tiie Convention synonymously, and 
were jointly ap|)licd to the voluntary passage of free white persons to 
the United States, either across the ocean, or by land, from the con- 
tiguous Spanish and British colonies. This brings us to the appro- 
priate, specific, technical, signification of each of these terms. 
Migration signifies to 'cave, to quit, to depart from, one region or country 
for another ; and in common parlance, history, and legal documents, 
it is used to signify a departure from one country for another by land ; 
though I admit that emigration and immigration are now used to signify 
a change of domicile by land or water. Importation signifies to bring 
into; and in common parlance, history, ami legal documents, it is 
used to signify bringing into one country from another by water, 
though between contiguous countries, importation may be by land. 
We cannot su|)pose that the Convention, understanding the meaning of 
words, and using them in both tiieir technical and popular significa- 
tion, applied the term importation to free white innnigi'ants from Europe. 
Are such persons importal ? Arc they considered, treated, and men- 
tioned by the merchants in whose ships they make the voyage, as 



25 

bales, barrels, and boxes of merchandise ? Every merchant knows 
that, as import and its derivatives are technical in commerce, their 
application to free persons voluntarily travelling, would be a gross 
misapplication of technical language. Then if importation cannot re- 
fer to free white immigrants, importalion and migration were not used 
by the Convention synonymously, but were intended to signify different 
things. 

To what then was the term importation applied ? To the foreign 
slave trade ; to the forcible importation of colored slaves from abroad. 
Could it be applied to Africans, brought into the country by water as 
property, like cattle ? No merchant, in importing cloths or cattle, 
would say that his bales or his beasts had migrated. In bringing slaves 
into the country in ships, he would describe them as imported, well 
Icnowing that in the counting house, to which we must refer for the 
popular or technical signification of terms current in commerce, by no 
other word could he so plainly and precisely describe his act of bring- , 
ing them in. In that Convention were Robert Morris, George Clymer, 
and Nicholas Oilman, men bred in the counting-house ; the first of 
whom, through the financial sagacity acquired in an occupation which 
makes no slight demands upon talent, was a main pillar of the Re- 
volution. Would such men, liberally endowed by nature and thus 
carefully trained, in a clause of the Constitution directly relating to 
commerce, misapply terms technical in their own profession 1 If then, 
the Convention intended to cover the slave trade with Africa by a sin- 
gle term, and we have already proved that they would not use more 
than one term, where one was ample to express their meaning, the 
term importation covered the whole ground. 

I will now consider the signification of the term migration, as used 
in the same sentence with importation. According to the definitions 
already given, were slaves, forcibly carried across the ocean to any 
market, ever described as emigrants or immigrants 1 Never ! 
Hence, after having applied to such forcible transportation, a term of 
precise and definite signification, would the Convention attempt to ex- 
press the same idea by another term, of signification less precise, or 
not currently used in such connexion ? The considerations already 
urged concerning their technical, verbal, philological precision in that 
instrument, entirely exclude such supposition. They must have re- 
ferred to something else than the foreign slave trade ; and nothing else 
is left for their reference, but the domestic slave trade, then conducted 
among the States by land. Migration was not applied to a foreign 
slave trade by land, through the contiguous Spanish and British 
colonies ; for no such trade ever had existed, or was then expected. 
The Spaniards did not conduct the slave trade for their own colonies, 
but relied upon the English, the monopolists of such trade by treaty. 
And as the slave trade was then permitted by South Carolina and 
Georgia, it would be conducted through Charleston and Savannah, 
ports near the plantations offering the demand, and not through New- 
Orleans and Pensacola, across a wilderness inhabited by Indians, or 
through Halifax and Quebec, over Canada, the Northern and Middle, 
and a portion of the Southern States. Mercantile sagacity never seeks 
a circuitous, dangerous, or expensive route, when a direct, safe, and 
cheap one is accessible. Nor was migration applied to free white set- 
tlers from Europe. This construction supposes that the Convention 
referred to African slaves and European immigrants in the same con- 



26 

nexion ; to the forcible importation of one, and the voluntary immigra- 
tion of the other, in the same sentence, with reference to the same 
prospective prohibition. According to a rule of construction founded 
in the common practice, and therefore the common sense of mankind, 
when terms are used in the same sentence disjunctively, while they are 
to be construed as referring to ditferent things, they are also to be con- 
strued as referring to different things analogous, of the same class, 
rather than to things both generally and specifically diflerent. Thus, 
if migration and importation be used disjunctively in the same sentence, 
and either be applied to any kind of slave trade, the other must be ap- 
plied to some other and different kind of slave trade, rather than to 
anything different from all slave trades. Did the Convention intend to 
include in the same sentence of a constitutional provision, African 
slaves and European settlers? Or to impose any prospective pro- 
hibition upon the immigration of the latter ? Did Franklin, the grand- 
son of an J^^iglishman, Clymer, the son of an Englishman, Robert 
Morris, an Englishman by birth, and delegates from a State abounding 
in German population, intend to cla.ssify together the colored slave and 
the free white settler from their fatherland ? Or with the children of 
that Germany whose every inch of territory is historically stamped 
with literature and science, with romance, and chivalry, and song, with 
struggles unto death for freedom of thought, and speech, and action ? 
Having reared a temple to Freedom amid toil, privation, and blood, 
aye ! the blood of France, and Spain, and Holland, and Germany, and 
Poland, did they intend to close its doors against the compatriots of 
Lee, and Gates, and Sterling, and De Kalb, and Steuben, and Pulaski, 
and Kosciusko, and Lafayette ? Theirs was no Chinese policy of iso- 
lation from the rest of tiie world. Knowing that the United States had 
originated in European immigration, and would continue to grow and 
prosper under the same process, they never dreamed of thus closing 
the doors of their freedom and prosperity. Then if importation could 
not refer to free immigrants from Europe, or to slaves transferred from 
one State of the Union to another, importation and migration were not 
used synonymously. And if African slaves and European immigrants 
were not alluded to in the same connexion, inigration was not applied 
to I*)uroppan immigrants. 

But if these terms refer to any other persons than slaves, the 
Federal Government is armed with powers which the Old Thirteen 
States never thought of conceding. The clause allows "the importa- 
tation or migration of such persons as the States now existing may 
choose to admit," subject to a tax not exceeding ten dollars for each 
person, till ISOS, and authorizes Congress to prohibit such importation or 
migration afterwards. The State right thus temporarily retained by the 
Old Tliirteen, thus subsequently surrendered fir all the States, is the 
right of each number of the Old Thirteen to admit within its limits, any 
persons at its discretion. If this clause refers to any otiier persons 
than slaves, it authorizes Congress, af\er ISOS, to prohibit any 
foreigner from entering anv part of the Union, or crossing its Northern 
or Southern frontier, or travelling from one State or Territory to 
another; and to prohibit the citizens of each State or Territory from 
travelling to another. Did the Old States, careful to reserve most of 
their sovereigntv. and providing for the admission of New Slates on 
equal terms with the Old, intend to arm Congress with the power of 
prescribing who might become their inhabitants ? Of inspecting their 



27 

population, and removing all who had entered without Federal permis- 
sion ? To subject themselves to fines, and other penalties, imposed by 
Congress, for inviting foreigners to their lands, their workshops, their 
schools, their counting houses, and their ships ? Such despotism over 
personal rights in the States would never have been tolerated by the 
men of the Revolution. Yet such despotism might have been exer- 
cised by Congress at any time since 1808, and may be exercised now. 
if these terms, migration and i7nj)ortaii.on, refer to foreigners voluntarily 
entering a State by land or water, from a contiguous State, or from a 
foreign State or Colony. 

The Constitution, in Clause I. of Section II. of Art. IV., says that, 
" The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and 
immunities of citizens in the several States." The term citizen, in this 
clause, refers solely to the rights of person and property ; for if it 
covered political rights, all elections in each State might be controlled 
by any or all of the other States, and all State sovereignty would be 
annihilated. But if the term be confined to personal and proprietory 
rights, then any person not a slave is entitled to such rights in any State 
which he may enter, in common with its own citizens ; and hence the 
clause concerning importation and migration conflicts with this clause 
concerning citizenship, or does not refer to European immigrants. The 
first of these clauses restrains Congress from prohibiting till 1808, 
"the migration or importation of such persons as the States now exist- 
ing think proper to admit." The Free States do not "think proper" 
to admit slaves, but do " think proper" to admit free persons fiom abroad 
or from other States. If this clause refers to European immigrants, 
Congress can now restrain these States from admitting them, either 
from foreign countries, or other States of the Union. I need not say 
how this doctrine would be received by any State, offering the shield 
of its constitution and laws to all citizens of the other States, and espe- 
cially by the new States, ofiering their fertile lands to settlers from the 
whole Union and all Europe. 

This clause concerning migration and importation refers only to the 
Old Thirteen, as they were the only existing States at the adoption of 
the Constitution. If this clause relates to i'ree white immigrants, then 
Congress might have prohibited their entrance into the territories or 
new States immediately, and into the Old Thirteen after 1808. If 
the Convention intended to arm Congress with power to prevent the set- 
tlement of new States, then all constitutional provisions for the govern- 
ment of territories, and all provisions of the Continental Congress for 
the government of the North Western Territory, were nugatory. But 
perhaps the Convention intended to confine the prohibition after 1808 to 
the old States, and to leave the new without any such restraint. This 
construction involves two absurdities. If the clause were designed to 
cover slavery, then the Convention intended to invest the new States 
with unlimited power over that institution. But as the Continental 
Congress and the Federal Convention were sitting in Philadelphia 
simultaneously, and the former were carefully excluding slavery 
from that nursery of new States, the North-western Territory, I can 
hardly suppose that the latter would constitutionally invest them with 
exclusive privileges over the subject. The old States never intended 
to invest the new with sovereignty which they relinquished for them- 
selves. At most, they intended to admit new States on equal terms 
with themselves, and not with especial immunities. 



28 

This clauso authorizes Congress to impose a tax upon tiie persons 
imported. Tiie manifest object of this, was the discouragement of such 
importation till the time arrived f^jr imposing the prohibition. With 
the vast and fertile North-western Territory before them, for which the 
Continental Congress were then legislating, could the Convention have 
designed to close it against Europeans by taxes upon immigration? 
But the advocates of slavery, to exempt tiie domestic slave trade from 
the operation of this term migration, change their ground, and admit 
that the Convention, while intending to raise no obstacles against free 
white immigration, did intend to discourage the foreign slave trade, so 
far as it could be discouraged by this limited tax. They are very 
ingenious and very versatile ! In considering the last objection, we 
found them, in attempting to exempt slavery from this term migrnlion, 
applying it to free white immigrants. And now, to exempt slavery 
from the same operation, they would remove all obstacles to such im- 
migration. We cannot permit them, either to connect slaves and free 
immigrants in the same sentence, or to change the meaning of consti- 
tutional terms according to their convenience. If the Convention 
wished to leave the doors of the Union open to free white immigrants, 
while they would discourage, by taxation, the importation of slaves, 
why should they allude at all to free white immigration? Silence 
would be the surest mode of keeping such doors open, especially when 
they had provided, in the same Constitution, for the adoption, the natu- 
ralization, the impatriation of those who came. But if both migration 
and importation refer to the slave trade, domestic and foreign, why 
should the power of taxation be'applied to the foreign only ? 'I'he Con- 
stitution, in Clause II. of Sect. X. of Art. I., says that, " No State shall, 
without the consent of Congress, la\' any imposts or duties on imports 
or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its 
inspection laws.'"' An important object of this provision was the pre- 
vention of the States from annoying each other with conflicting legis- 
lation, with those municipal restraints upon internal commerce and 
intercourse which had never prevailed in the United States, even when 
colonies, and which had long been sources of social evil to Spain, Italy, 
Germany, and other European nations. While studious to leave in 
full sovereign force, all State rights consistent with a national govern- 
ment, the Convention wished to promote that assimilation and fusion of 
the States into one people, which would be the strongest bond of their 
political union ; and hence the Convention not only interdicted all con- 
nicting State legislation upon commercial intercourse among the States, 
but also provided for equality of citizenship in the several States. 
Then in prohibiting the States from imposing duties on imports or 
exports, wiiile granting to each of the old States till 1808, the privilege 
of the slave trade, domestic and foreign, the Convt-ntion precluded 
them, while the privilege endurt-d, from imposing duties u()on cither 
branch of this trade. But in authorizing Eetleral taxation upon tiie 
slave trade, while it was permitted to the old States till 1808, why 
should the Convention confine this authority to the foreign branch of 
it ? Having carefully restrained the States from conflicting legislation, 
the Convention were quite too wise to invest this power of annoyance 
in the Federal Government. The power of raising barriers to social 
and commercial intercourse among the States, would be quite as inju- 
rious when exercised upon the whole of them by the Federal Govern- 
ment, as when exercised bv them against each other ; and hence the 



29 

Convention carefully denied to the Federal Government a power too 
dangerous, too essentially evil, even to be left with the States. In no 
part of the constitution is the Federal Government authorized to impose 
taxes or otiier burdens upon commerce, or any other intercourse among 
the States. Then as the States were interdicted from imposing a tax 
upon the domestic slave trade, the Federal Government, by this con- 
finement of the tax upon slaves lo those imported, were restrained from 
the same power ; and hence this Congressional power of taxing the 
slave trade is granted only in connexion with importation, or the foreign, 
and not with migration, or the domestic slave trade. 

Nothing then is left for the operation of this term migration, except- 
ing the migration of slaves from one State of tlie Union to another; 
from the JSorthern, then including Maryland, Virginia, and North Ca- 
rolina, to the Southern, signifying South Carolina and Georgia. This 
process was then in operation ; and Mr. Madison says that the appre- 
iiension of its being the only source of supply to the Southern States, 
suggested their opposition to any restraint upon the foreign African 
slave trade. Nor must we forget the motives of the Convention in arm- 
ing the Federal Government with prohibitory power over the slave trade. 
The deep and solemn conviction then pervading all the States, excepting 
South Carolina and Georgia, in the heinous character of the traftic, 
was equally applicable to the importation of slaves from abroad, and 
their migration from one State to another ; and hence they were equally 
intent on abolishing both, and carefully covered each by a term of pre- 
cise, definite, exclusive signification. 

Having settled the constitutional signification of migration and impor- 
tation, I will consider the power over the slave trade with which the 
Constitution armed the Federal Government. The Constitution allows 
to the Old Thirteen States only, ibr twenty years, ending in 1808, the 
privilege of importing slaves from abroad, and of transferring slaves 
from one to the rest of these Tiiirteen, and arms Congress with the 
power of suppressing, in IWOS or afterwards, all slave trade, foreign and 
domestic, by and among these States. By the same clause. Congress is 
authorized to forbid immediately, all slave ti'ade in any other part of 
the Union excepting tlie Old Thirteen States. Congress exercised the 
first of these powers in 1808, in forbidding all foreign slave trade. It 
might have exercised the second of these powers in 1808 or subs6«- 
quently, in forbidding all domestic slave trade among the Old Thirteen 
States. It might have exercised the third of these powers immediately 
upon the adoption of the Constitution by the States, in prohibiting all 
slave trade in all territories and new States. And it might prohibit all 
domestic slave trade now. Hence had the ordinance of 1787 never 
been enacted by the Continental Congress, or ratified by the ceding 
States, this clause of the Constitution could have been used to prevent 
the transportation of slaves to the Northwestern Territory, by the first 
Congress in 1789. The same spirit which produced that ordinance, 
extorted from South Carolina and Georgia a reluctant assent to this 
constitutional provision. The clause says that " the migration or im- 
portation of such persons as any of the States now existing may think 
proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year 
one thousand eight hundred and eight." The necessary inference is 
that, such 7nigration and importation may be prohibited in 1808 or after- 
wards, and without this restraint till 1808, might be prohibited immedi- 
ately ; for according to well-established rules of construction, a tem- 



30 

porary prohibition implies not only the power to act at the end 
of the proiiibition, but the power to act immediately if such 
prohibition were not interposed. Congress entertained no doubt of this, 
having interdicted the foreign slave trade in 1808, so soon as the prohi- 
bition expired. And if Congress have this full power over the foreign 
slave trade, have they not the same over the domestic ? Both are men- 
tioned in the same sentence, the domestic as migration, the foreign as 
importation; and tlie toleration till 1808 equally covers both, and conse- 
quently leaves botli to Congress after its expiration. 

This construction is sustainetl by the declarations of eminent jurists, 
expressed in the conventions of the slave States to whicii was submitted 
the Federal Constitution ; opinions showing that the Convention of 1787, 
by thisclause, intended the eventual suppression of all slave trade after 
1808. In the convention of Virginia, opposition being made to this 
clause, because it might eventually encourage emancipation, Governor 
Randolph said, " I hope that there is no one here, who, considering the 
subject in the calm light of philosophy, will advance an objection dis- 
honorable to Virginia ; that at the moment they arc securing the rights 
of their citizens, an objection will not be started that there is a spark of 
hope, that these unfortunate men now held in bondage, may, by the 
operation of the general government, be made free." Indeed ! So ac- 
cording to Governor Randolph, this clause of the constitution atiorded 
a spark of hope in the ultimate freedom of the slaves through the ope- 
ration of the Federal Government ! And any objection to this clause 
on that account, would be dishonorable to Virginia ! And he not only 
approved the clause, but expressed his hope that the power which it 
eventually granted would induce schemes of gradual and general 
emancipation by the States ! 

Mr. Tyler, father of the late President, in the same Convention, ear- 
nestly opposed this toleration of the slave trade till 1808. He would 
prohibit it immediately, saying, " My earnest desire is, that it may be 
handed down to posterity that I oppose this wicked clause.'' 

Mr. Johnson, in the same Convention, said, " The principle of 
emancipation has begun since the Revolution. Let us do what we will, 
it will come round." 

Mr. Mason, who drew the Constitution of Virginia, and was after- 
wards its Governor, Mr. Innis, then Attorney General of that State, 
and Mr. Dawson, all in the same Convention, expressed the same opi- 
nions, looking forward to the eventual and not very remote abolition of 
slavery. And in tliese opinions they were sustained by Washington, 
Jefferson, Patrick ilcnry, Grayson, Tucker, Wythe, Lee. Pendleton, 
Blair, Page, Parker, Madison, stars of tlie first magnitude in the glo. 
rious constellation which then shone upon the " Ancient Dominion." 

Luther Martin, a host in jurisprudence, a delegate from Maryland 
in the Federal Convention of 1787, said in the Convention of that State 
u|)on the Federal Constitution, " We ought to authorize the General 
Government to make sueii regulations as shall be thought most advan- 
tageous for the gradual abolition of slavery, and the emancipation o( 
slaves which are already in the States." 

In tiie Convention of South Carolina upon the same Constitution, Mr. 
Iredell, afterwards a judge of the Federal Supreme Court, in speaking 
of this clause, said, " When the entire abolition of slavery takes place, 
it will be an event wliich must be pleasing to every generous mind, 
and every friend of human nature." 

Mr. (lallowav, in thr same Convention, saitl, "I wish to see tiiis 



31 

abominable trade put an end to. I apprehend tlie clause means to 
bring forward manumission." 

In the Convention of Pennsylvania, Judge Wilson, who had been a 
member of the Federal Convention, said, " I consider this clause as 
laying the foundation for banishing slavery out of this country. It 
will produce the same kind of gradual change as was produced in Penn- 
sylvania. The new States which are to be formed will be under the 
control of Congress in this particular, and slaves will never be intro- 
duced among them. It presents us with the pleasing prospect that the 
rights of mankind will be aci<nowledged and established throughout the 
Union. Yet the lapse of a few years, and Congress will have power 
to extirpate slavery from our borders." 

In the Convention of Massachusetts, General Pleath said, "Slavery 
is confined to the States now existing. It cannot be extended. By 
their ordinance Congress has declared that the new States sliall be 
republican States, and have no slavery." 

In the same Convention, Judge Daws said, " Altliough slavery is not 
smitten by an apoplexy, yet it has received a mortal wound, and will 
die of consumption." 

These declarations, which I could multiply ten fold, show that the 
ten States which opposed during four months in the Federal Conven- 
tion, even a temporary toleration of the slave trade, and finally yielded 
it to the threats of South Carolina and Georgia about secession and 
foreign alliance, would have never yielded it, had they supposed that 
slavery was to be perpetual, or extended to new States. They yielded 
to the demand of South Carolina and Georgia, because they saw that 
Congress, after that demand was satisfied, would be able to prohibit all 
slave trade, confine slavery within its then existing limits, and leave it 
to perish there by its own vices. 

This construction of the Constitution against all slave trade, foreign 
and domestic, is sustained by the legislation of Congress before 1808. 
By the act of March 22, 1794, all citizens of the United States, and all 
foreigners residing within any of them, are prohibited from prosecuting 
the slave trade with any foreign country. Why should Congress do 
this, while the Constitution still allowed the foreign and domestic slave 
trade in the United States? The answer is found in tlie deep repro- 
bation of slavery then pervjiding the Northern and Middle States, and 
the most enlightened population of Maryland, Virginia, and North Caro- 
lina. The Congress of 1794 was chiefly composed of, and elected by, 
that Revolutionary generation which had borne its testimony against 
slavery from the commencement of 1774, and which was only re- 
strained from denouncing it in the Federal Convention, by the awful 
alternative presented by South Carolina and Georgia. This Revolu- 
tionary generation, speaking through the Congress of 1794, and thus 
restrained till 1808, exercised their prohibitory over what remained, 
and prohibited all citizens of the United States, and foreigners resid- 
ing in any of them, from prosecuting the slave trade with foreign 
countries. But this generation went further, and by the act of Febru- 
ary 28, 1803, prohibited American vessels with slaves on board from 
foreign countries, from entering the ports of those States which had 
forbidden slavery, thus exerting the power of the Federal Govern- 
ment in aid of State laws against slavery. 

Still more decisive is the act of March 26, 1804, for the government 
of the Louisiana and Orleans Territories, which forbids the importation 



of slaves into either of them, from any place without the United States, 
or of slaves imported into the United States after May 1, 1798, or 
which might be imported after March 26, 1804. The same act for- 
bids the importation of slaves into either of such territories, excepting by 
citizens of the United States, entering either of them for actual settle- 
ment, and the owners of such slaves at the time of entn*-. And the act 
(ic-cUirvsJ'ree, any slave imported into either of these territories against 
any provision of such act. Wiiat induced tiiis legislation ? As slavery 
then existed in a small portion of these vast and fertile territories, Con- 
gress foresaw that they would stimulate an extensive slave trade, 
foreign and domestic. Congress could immediately prohibit the foreign 
slave trade to the ports of Louisiana. But as they could not, till 1808, 
prohibit it to the ports of the Old Tliirteen States, they foresaw that, if 
the ports of Louisiana were closed against it, an extensive foreign 
slave trade would be carried to these territories through the ports of 
the Old Tliirteen, till the time for restraining the latter should arrive, 
or during ti)e interval between 1804 and 1808. Hence Congress 
closed Louisiana against all foreign slave trade, both through its own 
ports, and through those of all the rest of the Union, including the Old 
Thirteen. Congress also foresaw that Louisiana would be open to an 
active domestic slave trade, not only from all the Xorllicrn and Middle 
States where slavery yet lingered, but from all the States, Old or New, 
South of IMason"s and Dixon's Line. And as Congress could not prohibit 
the domestic slave trade in the Old Thirteen till 1808, but could pro- 
hibit it immediately in all other parts of the Union, thev exercised this 
power over Louisiana, and immediately closed it against all domestic 
slave trade. And what was the inducement to these prohibitions? 
Mr. Jelferson, then President, and a majority then in Congress, while 
unwilling to disturb the relations of property then existing in Louisiana, 
were resolved against leaving it as a nursery of Slave States. 

Whence did Congress derive the power to prohibit, in 1804, all slave 
trade to Louisiana ? It is not granted expressly ; and according to the 
strict constructionists, it is excluded by Amendment IX., saying that, 
"The enumeration, in the Constitulion, of certain rights, shall not be 
construed to deny or disparage others, rc-taincd by the people ;"' and by 
Amendment X., saying that, "The powers not delegated to the United 
States by tlie Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are re- 
served to the States respectively, or to the people ;" and the power 
over the slave trade granted in clause I. of sect. IX. of Art. 1., was re- 
strained towards the Old Thirteen till 1808. Congress derived tliis 
power from this very clause of sect. IX. of Art. 1., which says that, 
while Congress shall not j)rniiibit any slave trade to the Old Tliirteen 
till 1808, it may prohibit all shne trade to all the rest of the Union 
immediately, and to the Old Thirteen after 1808. This act of 1804 
was the work of a Congress from which the Revolutionary generation 
had not yet departed ! A Congre.ss aided from the Executive branch, 
iiy Jefferson in the Presidency and Madison in the State Department! 
A Congress whoso laws were enacted during the judicial administra- 
tion of Marshall and Buslirod Washington ! Hero was a Federal 
Governmtnt illuminated, in all branehts, by the great lights of Virgi- 
nia ! Was the t.-onstitutionality of this legislation ever doubted ? Did 
any strict constructionist or monomaniac abstractionist rise up in 
those days, in South Carolina or ilsewheri', and jiroclaim to Jefferson 
and Madison and Marshall and Buslirod Washington, the men uf the 



33 

Revolution, of the Continental Congress, of the Federal Convention, of 
Washington's Administration, that the toleration of the slave trade till 
1808 extended beyond the Old Thirteen ? That, the proliibition of the 
slave trade after 1808 did not include the domestic as well as the 
foreign ? That Congress could not immediately prohibit all slave trade 
to all parts of the Union, excepting the Old Thirteen ? No! Nobody 
then doubted the power of Congress to legislate against slavery in the 
Territories, or doubted the derivation of this power from clause I. of 
sect. IX. of Art. I. And what does such legislation prove for the 
power of Congress over slavery in any part of the Union ? It proves 
that this clause was designed to cover the domestic, as well as the 
foreign slave trade ; that, as the temporary toleration of both, as a State 
right of the Old Thirteen, expired in 1808, Congress might then have 
prohibited the domestic .slave trade, as it did the foreign ; and that, it 
might prohibit the domestic slave trade now, not only from each of the 
States to the rest, but from the States to the Territories. 

This construction is sustained by legislation under the ordinance of 
1787, and the absence of all judicial opposition to such legislation. I 
have already stated that the ordinance of 1787 was adopted in 1789, 
by the first Congress under the Federal Constitution; and that the 
slaveholders of the Northwestern Territory, immediately and uncon-- 
ditionally deprived, by that ordinance, of their property in slaves, pre- 
sented a petition to the first Congress for its repeal, which was re- 
jected. Why did tliey not seek the Judiciary, and in a suit for their- 
property, test the constitutionality of this ordinance, or of its adoption by 
the Congress of 1789 ? That age abounded in eminent lawyers ; strict' 
construction, objections against constructive powers, defences of State 
rights, were then no novehies in any of the States, and jealousies about 
Southern rights in slavery no novelty in South Carolina and Georgia. 

This construction is sustained by the act of Congress of May 7, 1800, 
establishing a Territorial government in Indiana; and by the act of 
January 11, 1805, establishing a Territorial government in Michigan; 
and by the act of February 3, 1809, establishing a Territorial govern- 
ment in Illinois; and by the act of April 20, 1836, establishing a Ter- 
ritorial government in Wisconsin. In each of these acts. Congress 
extended over the Territory the ordinances of 1787. So by the act 
of March 30, 1822, establishing a Territorial government in Florida, 
Congress extended over it every act on the Statute book against the 
slave trade, foreign and domestic, including those of March 22, 1794,. 
May'lO, 1800, March 2, 1807, April 20,^1818, and March 3, 1819. 
So by the act of April 30, 1802, for the admission of Ohio to the 
Union, and by the act of April 19, 1816, for the admission of Indiana, 
and by the act of April 18, 1818, for the admission of Illinois, Con- 
gress declared that their Constitutions " must not be repugnant to the 
ordinance of 1787, between the original States and the people and States 
of the Northwestern Territory." By each of these three acts, Congress 
interdicted slavery in new States, as a condition precedent to their 
admission, declared that new States came into the Confederacy hy Con- 
gressional compact, and not constitutional right, and that slavery in a new 
State was a Congressional concession and not a right of sovereignty. 

Not only are some of these acts founded upon the ordinance of 1787, 
hut all of them have a constitutional foundation in clause i. of sect. ix. 
of art. i. This clause covers both the foreign and domestic slave trade, 
or it covers neither. Hence if Congress could prohibit both in Louisi- 
ana, as they did in 1804, they might have prohibited both in Florida, 

3 



34 

as they did the foreign in 1822. The power of Ck)ngress over the 
foreign slave trade is not granted expressly, the terms slave and slave 
trade not being contained in the Constitution. It can be founded only 
upon construction of Clause I. of Sect. IX. of Art. I. ; and if that clause 
allowed the slave trade to the Old Thirteen till 1808, and authorized 
Congress to prohibit it afterwards, it authorized Congress to prohibit it 
to all the rest of the Union immediately. And if it denied to the Old 
Thirteen all right in the foreign slave trade after 1808, and to all the 
rest of the Union immediately, so did it deny to each all right in the 
domestic slave trade. If, then, laws against the domestic slave trade 
are unconstitutional, so are laws against the foreign slave trade. Con- 
stitutionality or unconstitutionality must cover both alike. Will any- 
body, even in South Carolina, now contend for the legality of the foreign 
slave trade, and pronounce all the acts of Congress against it unconsti- 
tutional ? He would find opponents of this doctrine, at least in the slave 
breeding States. An argument that proves too much cannot be sound ; 
and as the argument against Congressional power over the domestic 
slave trade, whether in the States or the Territories, places the foreign 
slave trade beyond such power, and establishes that abomination as a 
sovereign or a caiistitulional right, secure against anything but a constitu- 
tional amendment, I must, to avoid this enormous consequence, contend 
for full Congressional power, since 1808, over all slave trades between 
all parts of the Union. If the domestic slave trade between States, or 
between States and Territories, can stand under the Constitution, so can 
the foreign. If one must fall as a sovereign or constitutional right, so 
must the other. 

Having analysed and explained the intentions of our Revolutionary 
Fathers concerning slavery, and the powers which they vested in the 
Federal Government over all slave trade, I will proceed to examine 
some other relations between slavery and the Federal Constitution. 

We have long heard and read much about the '• compromises of the 
Constitution," proclaimed in the South, and echoed in the North, Middle, 
and West ; and many, even the majority, have been led to believe that, 
under these " compromises," all the demands of the South for slavery 
were constitutional. Among these demands are that, whenever a free 
State is admitted to the Union, a slave State shall be admitted to balance 
it ; and tliat, new States have a right to admission williout any conditions 
imj)osed by the Federal Govcnmient, excepting a republican consti- 
tution ; and that, the citizen has no right of petition to Congress upon the 
subject of slavery ; and that, the Federal Government is bound to inter- 
fere with foreign governments for the surrender of fugitive slaves ; 
and that, the citizen lias a paramount Cdustitutional right to establish 
slavery in new territories. If these be compromises of the Constitution, 
that instrument is widely and sadly dillerent from the intentions of ten, 
at least, of the twelve States represented in the Federal Convention of 
1787. If these be compromises of the Constitution, that instrument is 
widely short of the equality among the States, which the Convention 
intended to establish a.s the foundation of the Federal Compact ; woeful 
indeed, is the condition of the Free States, and hopeless is the character 
of the Nation. The Free States nnist be content with their present limits 
and future vassalage, while slavery inarches, with sure and giant 
.strides, to the Pacitie Oecan and the Isthmus of Panama ; and the 
Nation must be content with th(^ (Midiiriiig odium of deliberately perpe- 
tuating and extending an institution, which, whether viewed in " the 
calm light of philosophy," or the light more brilliant because com- 
ing more directly from heaven, of Christianity, must be regarded as a 



35 

gross and criminal violation of natural rights. But a careful examina- 
tion will show that no such compromises have been made ; that, all 
these demands are groundless assumptions. The only expressed com- 
promises of the Constitution upon the subject of slavery, are four. 
These are, the toleration of the slave trade, domestic and foreign, till 
1808, granted to the Old Thirteen only, and the expiration of which 
leaves Congress with plenary power over all slave trades ; slave repre- 
sentation in Congress ; slave enumeration in apportioning direct taxes 
among the States ; and the surrender of fugitive slaves. And the only 
implied compromise upon the subject, is the power of the Federal Go- 
vernment to call out the militia of the States, to suppress insurrections. 
If anybody can discover any more, let him, to use the memorable words 
of Patrick Henry when accused of treason, make the most of them. Do 
these compromises restrain Congress from prohibiting the domestic slave 
trade ? From excluding slavery from the Territories ? Or from new 
States ? No ! Notwithstanding all these compromises. Congress have 
plenary power over all slave trades ; over slavery in all the Territories, 
in possession or reversion ; and so far as slavery is involved, over the 
constitution of every State applying for admission to the Union. 

To sustain these demands, the slave States quote the amendments of 
the Constitution, IX. and X. ; the first saying, " The enumeration, in the 
Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or dispa- 
rage others, retained by the people ;" the second saying, " The powers 
not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by 
it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 
In the first of these amendments, the terms " enumeration " and " cer- 
tain rights," apply to the rights retained by the States or the people, and 
not to those vested in the Federal Government. The Constitution, a 
compact of the States with each other, of the people among themselves, 
to establish a common government for certain purposes, is merely a 
concession or grant of governmental powers from the great reservoirs 
of State and popular sovereignty. All the rights, all the sovereignty, 
not conceded to this grantee, this common government for certain pur- 
poses, of course are retained by the grantors, the States, or the people. 
A deed of enumerated lands does not cover the remaining lands of the 
grantor, or require him, for the preservation of his title, to enumerate or 
describe them. Hence the Constitution can enumerate only govern- 
mental powers, and not State or popular rights. The second of these 
amendments merely repeats the sense of the first in different terms ; 
for as the first says that the enumeration of State or popular rights does 
not reach the remaining rights of the States or the people, so the second 
says that the powers not delegated to, not enumerated in, the Federal 
Government, or prohibited to the States, are still retained by the States 
or the people. The Constitution cannot specify everything retained, 
but was intended to specify everything granted. It enumerates rights 
vested in the Federal Government, and to remove all doubt about their 
extent, enumerates other rights vested in the States or the people ; and 
it enumerates powers delegated to the Federal Government, and to re- 
move all doubts about their extent, enumerates other jmvers retained 
by the States. But where are all other rights and powers ? Still in 
those two great reservoirs. State and popular sovereignty. 

Do these amendments leave to the new States the right to establish 
slavery ? Such States never had any constitutional rights in the slave 
trade, foreign or domestic; for such rights are expressly denied to 
them, and conceded to the Old Thirteen only till 180S. Every one of 
the new States, from its entrance into the Union, has been under a 



36 

constitutional power of prohibition upon this subject, which Congress 
might exercise or not, at their discretion. They did exercise this 
j)ower over tiie domestic slave trade, in tlie Northwestern Territory in 
17^9; over all slave trade, in the Louisiana Territory in 1804; 
over the foreign slave trade, in the Florida Territory in 1822. Tliey 
stipulated 710/ to exercise this power over the domestic slave trade, in 
the Teiii;ess<^(j Territory in 1189; in the Georgia Western Territory 
in 1798. Tlioy did exercise this power over the foreign slave trade in 
the whole Union in 1808. They did exercise this power over all 
slavery, in tlie Northwestern Territory in 1789; in the Indiana Terri- 
tory in 1800; in the Michigan Territory in 1805; in the Illinois Ter- 
ritory in lS09; in all Territory West of the Mississippi, and North of 
N. lat. 3G° 30' in lo20, and in the Wisconsin Territory in 1836. 
They rf?(i exercise this power over all slavery, in Ohio in 1802; in 
Indiana in 1810; in Illinois in 1818. Hence all the rights of the 
new States over slavery are legislative, and not constitutional . But if 
legislative, may they not be revoked ? For some of the new States I 
answer in the negative. Kentucky, an independent nation by separa- 
tion from Virginia in 1785, entered the Union like Texas, a Slave Scate 
through the exercise of its sovereignty. Tennessee, Louisiana, Missis- 
sippi, .\labaina, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, on entering the Union, 
possessed the right to establish and maintain slavery within their 
respective limits, by Congressional grant to them as Territories, 
founded, in tiie case of Tennessee, upon the compact of cession with 
North Carolina ; in the cases of Mississippi and -\labama, upon the 
compact of cession with Georgia ; in the case of Louisiana, upon the 
Treaty of cession with France ; and in that of Florida, upon the treaty 
of ces.sion with Spain ; and they were admitted to the Union without 
any interdiction of the privilege thus expressly granted. Hence they 
came into the Union as Slave States by Congressional grant, and not by 
constitutional or sovereign right ; and this grant, in each of them 
equivalent to a compact, once made, cannot be annulled. The Union, 
tiirough Congress, took them with their slavery, and by interfering 
with it wiihin their respective limits, would violate the condition, and 
authoii/,0 them to assume what they never before possessed, separate 
nationality. But while Congress could not interfere with slavery in . 
either of these new States, it could abolish slavery in any State of the 
Northwestern Territorv. This Territory was ceded to the Union under 
a positive intcrdiclit)n of slavery for ever, and these States entered the 
Union expressly subject to the interdiction ; ami hence, if either of 
them should establish slavery, it would violate its compact with the 
Union, and the compact of the Union with the ceding Slates, and 
authorize Congress to interfere. Then as the Constitution arms Con- 
gress witli plenary power over all slave trade, and denies the temporary 
suspension of this power to the new States, none of these States can 
claim, undf-r Amendments IX. and X., constitutional or sovereign 
power over slavery. Certain powers over slavery, being expressly 
granted to Congress by Clause I. of Sec. IX. of Art. I. cannot, under 
thesi' amendments, be retained by the States or the people. 

The Constitution, in Sec. 1V^ of Art. IV. says that, "The United 
States shall guarantee to every State in this Union, a republican form 
of government. " As this authorizes the Federal Government to 
intortl'H! against any other State governments than those which are 
republican, what power does it confer over slavery in the new Stati's ? 
If a State should now be admitted without slavery, under no interdic- 
tion of slavery while a Territory, and with no Congressional compact 
concerning slavery, could it afterwards establish this institution as a 



HI 

State right? It could not import slaves from abroad against the act of 
1808 ; and if Congress should exercise their constitutional power over 
the domestic slave trade, it could not import them from any State or 
Territory of the Union. If then it could not import materials for 
slavery, could it find them among its own citizens, and reduce any 
portion of them to servitude, excepting in punishment for crime ? Such 
act would be an unconstitutional violation of that " republican form oi 
government" which " The United States sJiall guarantee to every 
State in this Union." Here then is a power over slavery which is 
denied to the new States by this section of the Constitution, and there- 
fore cannot be claimed for them under Amendments IX. and X.. 

Whence did the Old Thirteen States derive their right to establish 
and maintain slavery within their respective limits? Not from the 
Constitution. This right is older, in each of them, than any Federal 
Constitution, whether of 1778 or 1787. It became part of their sove- 
reignty by the Declaration of Independence, and was not surrendered, 
either to the Continental Congress, or the Federal Convention. Exist- 
ing before the Constitution, and not mentioned in that instrument, it is 
not the creation of compromise ; and hence no one of the Old Thirteen 
can refer to " the compromises of the Constitution" for its rights over 
slavery at home. For the new States no such compromises were 
made. In these, such rights must be either sovereign, existing inde- 
pendent of the Constitution, or granted by Congress, either during 
their territorial existence, or upon their admission as States. The 
Constitution creates no sovereignty in the old States ; for no one of 
them thereby acquires any sovereign right which it did not previously 
possess. Under this compact, the old States surrender, but do not 
acquire sovereignty ; and as equivalents of the surrender, each 
acquires rights of protection from the whole. But these rights of pi"o- 
tection are" not rights of sovereignty, which can be enforced by the 
last resort of nations. If then the Constitution grants no sovereignty 
to the old States, they cannot plead the compromises of the Constitution 
for their sovereign rights over slavery at home. And if it grants no 
sovereignty over slavery to the new States, they are equally destitute 
of such plea. The Constitution left the old States on this point as it 
found them, by silence, and not by compromise. 

How, in relation to slavery, did the Constitution find, and how has it 
left, the new States ? Vermont and Kentucky, having separated, the 
first from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, in 1777, 
the second from Virginia in 1786, before the adoption of the Constitution, 
were admitted in 1791. The Confederacy found them with full 
attributes of sovereignty, as it recently found Texas, or might now find 
Britain, or France. Among these attributes were untrammelled domestic 
rights over slavery ; rights which Vermont had exercised by constitu- 
tional prohibition, and Kentucky by constitutional toleration and 
statutory regulation. Did the Union admit them with these rights 
untrammelled ? It did not, for it could not. The Constitution, made in 
1787, went into operation in 1789, two years before the admission of 
these States ; and it confines the privilege of the slave trade till 1808 
to the States then existing. When existing? Existing in 1787, in the 
lime of the Convention, and represented in that body ; or in 1788, at 
the adoption of the Constitution, by nine of the twelve States so re- 
presented ; or in 1789, when the first Congress under it assembled. 
Neither Vermont nor Kentucky were ever represented in tiie Continen- 
tal Congress, or the Federal Convention. Existing as independent 
nations before the framing or adoption of the Constitution, they were 



3d 

no more parties to it li.an Britain or France; and entering the Union 
two years after the Constitution went into operation, they entered it ex- 
pressly excluded from the provision just mentioned, and under a con- 
stitutional proliibition a^^ainst the slave trade. Thus the Constitution, 
instead of granting to these two States all or any sovereign rights over 
slavery, expressly takes one of these rights away. Nor is this all. 
The ordinance of 1787, ratified, adopted, re-enacted unanimously, by 
the first Congress under the Federal Constitution in 1789, confines to 
the "original States," the Old Thirteen, the right to reclaim slaves 
fugitive to tlie New States. Is not this restriction in the ordinance re- 
moved by the Constitution, which gives the right of reclamation to all 
the States, without distinction between New or Old ? The ordinance 
is expressly a perpetual compact between the United States and the 
ceding States, and between the United States and the People and States 
of the North-Western Territory ; and, therefore it cannot be annulled 
by the Constitution without express terms, and the Constitution contains 
no such express nuUilications. But the ordinance may be repealed ; 
for it says that, " The following articles shall be considered as articles 
of compact between the original States and the People and States in 
the said Territory, and remain for ever unalterable, unless by com- 
mon consent." This repeal by common consent is not wrought by the 
Constitution ; for it contains nothing expressly against the ordinance, a 
repeal is not necessary to any of its expressly granted powers, and no 
unnecessary powers can be deduced from it by implication. Then as 
the ordinance was re-enacted by the first Congress under the Federal 
Constitution, a Congress composed, in no small part, of those who had 
composed the Convention and made the Constitution, we must infer 
that the ordinance and the Constitution are not inconsistent. Then as 
the ordinance confines to the Old Thirteen, the right of reclaiming 
fugitive slaves from the North-Western Territory, and as the ordi- 
nance, thus re-enacted in 1789, is still the law of the land under the 
Constitution, we must infer that the Constitution does not carry the 
right of reclamation from the North-Western Territory beyond the 
"original"' Thirteen States. Hence if slaves should escape from 
any New State into either of the five North-Western States, they could 
not be reclaimed ; and hence Vermont and Kentucky entered the 
Union in 1791, without the power retained by the Old Thirteen, of 
reclaiming slaves fugitive to the North-Western Territory. Tennessee, 
ceded to the Union by North Carolina in 1789, and admitted in H796, 
Mississippi and Alabama, ceded to the Union by Georgia in 1798, and 
admitted in 1817 and 1819, not having been represented in the Con- 
tinental Congress or the Federal Convention, and admitted long aAer 
the Constitution went into operation, were expressly excluded from this 
clause concerning the slave trade, and impliedly excluded from the 
ordinunee of 17^7 for the surrender of slaves fugitive to the North- 
Western Territory. And thus, instead of entering the Confederacy 
with untranunelled sovereignty over slaverv. thev entered it subject to 
a constitutional power of prohibition over all slave trade, domestic and 
foreign, and to a restraint u[wn the surrender of fugitive slaves. 
AVhile parts of North Carolina and Georgia, these territories possessed 
original inherent sovereignty over slavery. But these cessions an- 
nihilated all their sovereignty of every kind, and made them the pro- 
perty of the Union, with no powers excepting those derived from the 
compacts of cession, or from acts of Congress. Louisiana came into 
possession of the Union as a colony of France, entirely subject to its 
laws, and consequently without any rights of sovereignty. Then as 



39 

entire sovereignty over the colony existed in France, it was transfer- 
red by the cession, not to the colony, but to the United States. 
Then as the Territory of Louisiana became the property of the 
United States without sovereign power over anything, and sub- 
ject to all constitutional acts of Congress for its government, 
the States of Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, can plead neither 
fnherent sovereignty nor constitutional compromise for their do- 
mestic rights over slavery. They never could have participat- 
ed in the temporary toleration of the slave trade, or in the 
ordinance of 1787 relative to fugitive slaves. All their rights 
over slavery flow from the Grajit of Congress in expressly ex- 
cepting them, while Territories, from the ordinance of 1787 con- 
cerning slavery, and from the forbearance of Congress in admitting 
them as it found tliem, with slavery established before the cession by 
France. Florida, coming into the possession of the Union as a colony, 
from Spain, without any sovereign power, rests upon the same founda- 
tion with Louisiana. The five States of the Northwestern Territory 
are members of the Union under a perpetual denial of all rights over 
slavery, by the ordinance of 1787. Iowa, a part of the territory ceded 
by France, enters the Union under a perpetual prohibition of slavery 
by the Missouri Compromise, an act of Congress expressly forbidding 
slavery in all the Territory West of the Mississippi and North of N. 
Lat. 36° 30', but neither expressly nor impliedly authorizing slavery 
South of that parallel. Thus while the Old Thirteen States, Vermont, 
Kentucky, and Texas, can plead inherent sovereignty for their rights 
over slavery at home, the other New States can plead neither inherent 
sovereignty nor constitutional compromise. 

But under the "compromises of the constitution," the slave States 
claim an equality of numbers with the free States, and consequently 
a balance of power in the Senate. Where is the article, section, 
clause, sentence, on which such claim can be founded ? Not in the 
Consiitution ; not in the records of the Federal Convention, or of either 
of the State conventions to which the Constitution was submitted. The 
pretensions of the Slave States upon this point, so frequently urged in 
Southern journals, speeches, and official documents, are condensed in 
a message by a Governor of a Western State, recently delivered to its 
Legislature, and in the following terms : 

" The spirit of mcdern abolitionism, if it existed 'nt all in the early 
days of the Republic, stood rebuked by the compromi'3es of the Consti- 
tution." 

" It stood equally reoaked by the Missouri compromise, which was 
a virtual continuation of that of the constitution." 

"Our Revolutionary Fathers, in adjusting the proportion between 
Free and Slave holding States, substantially fixed it in the latitude of 
36° 30'." 

Here are three direct and positive declarations, by the chief ma- 
gistrate of a State to its Legislature, under all the solemn formalities 
of authority, concerning our Revolutionary Fathers, in connection with 
slavery, every one of which is contradicted by their whole history. 

The first impliedly denies that the spirit of modern abolitionism 
existed in the early days of the Republic. If by modern abolitionism 
he means hostility to slavery, I would refer him to the legislation of 
the Continental Congress, the proceedings and great work of the Fede- 
ral Convention, the legislation of the first Congress, and the declarations 



40 

of Washington, and of all the great Revolutionary lights of Maryland, 
Vir<.inia, and North Carolina. If" modern abolitionism" be of mod#ni 
growth, I admit that it could not have been rebuked by our Revolu- 
tionary Fathers. But if it be like the abolitionism of the Revolution, 
I refer, for the character of its prototype, to those Revolutionary 
sources whose testimony is so ample. But this spirit of abolitionism 
was rebuked by the compromises of the Constitution ! The RevolQ- 
tionary generation which made the Constitution, had already abolished 
the slave trade in Rhode Island in 1774, in the whole Union in 1776 ; 
had interdicted slavery in Vermont in 1777, abolished it in Massachu- 
setts and Pennsylvania in 1780, and in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, 
and Connecticut in 1764; had prohibited the introduction of slaves into 
Virginia, in 1786, and had abolished slavery in the Northwestern Ter- 
ritory in 1787. Assembling under such auspices, the Convention 
made the first compromise with slavery, by tolerating the slave trade 
to the Old Thirteen till 1808, and providing for its prohibition after- 
wards. Did this ultimate and total prohibition of all slave trade 
rebuke that spirit of abolition wliich had always spoken so loudly, and 
done so much, during thirteen years ? And for the very purpose of 
preserving the New JStates from slavery, they were excluded from this 
temporary toleration. If all this were designed to rebuke the spirit of 
abolitionism, it would gladly stand thus rebuked, till every chain were 
broken and every bondman free ! Under the same auspices did the 
Convention make the second compromise with slavery, in the provision 
for the surrender of fugitive slaves. The want of such provision 
during the union of the Colonies from 1774 to 1778, and afterwards 
under the Old Confederation, was severely felt, not in encouragement 
to emancipation, but in the loss of property at the South, and in the in- 
crease of a burdensome population at the xVorth ; and to remove these 
evils, and mitigate the evils of slavery produced by the contiguity of 
PVee and Slave States, and not to rebuke the spirit of emancipation, 
did the Convention devise this provision. Could it restrain the legisla- 
tion of Congress over slavery ? Or obstruct its removal from any State ? 
If not, iiow could it rebuke the spirit of emancipation ? Under the 
same auspices, the Convention made the two remaining compromises 
with slavery, in slave-representation, and slave-enumeration in direct" 
taxation. The necessity of direct taxation was foreseen, and it was 
supposedj^erroncously as events have proved, to be the principal source 
of revenue ; and as son)e basis was necessary, that of representation in 
Congress was regarded as the most equitable. The Northern and Mid- 
dle States, having the greatest proportion of free population, foresaw 
that, if this were the only basis of representation, while representation 
was the basis of taxation, they would pay the greater portion of the 
taxes, while the Southern property in slaves would be exempted from 
taxation. The Southern States foresaw that, if free white population 
alone were represented, their representation would be numerically 
n)uch less than that of the Northern and Middle States ; and they also 
fiiresaw that, if property alone were the basis, they, with comparatively 
less free, and a numerous slave population, would bear an undue share 
of taxation. Hence the two sections made the compromise of represen- 
tation and direct taxation ; the Northern and Middle States assenting 
to slave representation, to obtain equality in taxation, and the Southern 
assenting tr) equality in taxation, to obtain equality in representation 
These two comproiDises encouraged, instead of rebuking, the spirit of 
emancipation ; as the Southern States, by augmenting tlieir free, and 
reducing their servile population, would approach nearer to equality in 



41 

both taxation and representation, obtaining more of the one, and avoid- 
ing more of the other. These are all the compromises of the Constitu- 
tion upon slavery ; and I have yet to learn how either was designed to 
rebuke the spirit of emancipation. 

The second of these declarations is that, our Revolutionary Fathers, 
in establishing the Constitution, adjusted the proportion between Free 
and Slave States, and substantially fixed it upon latitude 36° 3l)'. In 
what article, section, clause, sentence, or line of the Constitution, in 
what debate upon it in the Federal or either of the State Conventions, 
do we find the slightest evidence of this adjustment ? Of its having 
been even imagined by any member of either of those assemblies ? 
Of the twelve States represented in the Convention, New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania had already abolished 
slavery, while New York and New Jersey were expected to follow 
their example at no distant period ;' and Rhode Island, the only one of 
the Old Thirteen not represented in the Convention, had prohibited 
the slave trade before the battle of Bunker Hill, and had abolished 
slavery three years before the Convention assembled. Here then 
were seven of the Thirteen alreday known as hostile to slavery; while 
in the Convention, ten States of the twelve wished to abolish the foreign 
and domestic slave trade immediately, and did invest Congress with 
the power of immediately interdicting both to all the New Slates. 
And while the Convention were seeking these provisions, the Continen- 
tal Congress, sitting with the Convention in Philadelphia, where the 
members of the two bodies were in daily and intimate association, 
were interdicting slavery from all the five States of the Northwestern 
Territory. I admit that the admissions of Vermont and Kentucky were 
then contemplated. But as the first had interdicted, while the other 
had tolerated slavery, their admissions would not change the proportion 
between Free and Slave States. What then was the proportion con- 
templated by our Revolutionary Fathers, so far as their views on this 
point are determined by the Continental Congress and the Federal 
Convention ? Seven Old and six New States viithout, and six Old and 
one New State with slavery ; a proportion of thirteen to seven ! Does 
this seem like adjusting the proportion between Free and Slave States. 
on the basis of numerical equality ? So far from seeking any such 
numerical equality, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Caro- 
lina then gladly looked forward to the extinction of slavery, while the 
whole Thirteen States represented in the Continental Congress when 
the Constitution was in the hands of the Convention, provided for the 
perpetual exclusion of slavery from all the Territory then belonging 
to the Union as the nursery of New States. 

And in adjusting this numerical equality, our Revolutionary Fathers 
substantially fixed the boundary upon the line of N. L. 80° 'iQ.'W If 
this mean anything, it is that this line would divide the Free and Slave 
States equally. This line, which is the Southern boundary of Virginia 
and Kentucky, would throw Delaware, Maryland and Virginia into the 
Northern Section, and thus divide the Free and Slave States in the 
proportion of ten to three ! If the Convention contemplated the admis- 
sion of Kentucky and Vermont, and foresaw, as they must, the admis- 
sion of five States from the North Western Territory, and also foresaw, 
as they might, the admission of Tennessee and the Georgia Western 
Territory to the Union, and their ultimate growth to three or four 
States, then, in establishing this line as a boundary, they would have 
divided the two sections in the proportion of seventeen to six or seven ! 
If our Revoltionary Fathers never contemplated any such equality be- 



42 

tween the Free and Slave States, the assumption of this or any other 
boundary must be abandoned. If they did contemplate such equality, 
they could never have dreamed of this boundary ! 

And the Missouri compromise was a virtual continuation of the con- 
stitutional compromise about this numerical equality ! As no such 
constitutional compromise was imagined, this Missouri compromise 
cannot be any such continuation. And even if it were, the line which 
it assumed, besides throwing four of the present Slave States into the 
section of the Free, would divide the remaining Territory east of the 
Rocky Mountains in the proportion of about one fourth to the Slave, 
and three-fourths to the Free States. And if this line were applied 
only to the Territory remaining after the admission of Missouri, and 
without including Oregon, the numerical proportion would be fourteen 
Free, and twelve Slave States, and Territory enough for twelve Free, 
and four Slave States ; a proportion of twenty-six to sixteen ! If our 
Revolutionary Fathers provided, in the Constitution, for such numeri- 
cal equality, their intentions were sadly defeated by this Missouri 
compromise. And if the Missouri compromise were designed to se- 
cure this equality, its authors, when making it in 1820, must have 
foreseen the annexation of Texas, and the conquest of Mexico ; for 
nothing less than sucli prophetic vision can save them from the imputa- 
tion of legislating against their own designs. 

Under the " Compromises of the Constitution," the Slave States have 
demanded the riuht of New States to admission, without any conditions 
imposed by the Federal Government, excepting the guarantee of a re- 
publican constitution. New States can be admitted only as foreign, 
independent nations, like Kentucky, Vermont, or Texas, or as Terri- 
tories, the exclusive property of the Union, entirely subject to its laws, 
and without any inherent sovereignty. In the first case, they relinquish, 
upon admission, all the sovereignty vested in the Federal Government, 
and retain all the rest ; and in the second, they receive from Congress 
all the sovereignty not thus vested, or not denied by the act for their 
admission. If then. New States are formed from Territories belong- 
ing to the Union, and subject to its sovereignty under the constitutional 
power to make all needful rules and regulations for their government, 
cannot Congress prescribe the terms of admission ? Having exclusive 
jurisdiction over the Territories, Congr.^ss may refuse to admit them 
at all, and therefore may, within the constitutional limit of guarantee- 
ing a republican government, prescribe the terms of admission. Is 
slavery essential to a republican government ? Such is not the doc- 
trine of the Free States. Can Congress interdict slavery in New 
States ? It did in the five States of the Northwestern Territory, by 
eight different acts. And if this Congressional power be constitutional 
over the Northwestern Territory, why is it not over the Southwestern, 
or any othrr Territory ? This power was yielded, unwist^ly, wicked- 
ly yielded in the admission of Missouri. But an error of Congress is 
no amendment of the Constitution, to bind any future Congress to errors 
of similar or any character ; and if this point were unwisely yielded 
by the Free States heretofore, may God grant that it be wisely and 
virtuously maintained hereafter! The Constitution does not expressly 
authori/e Congress to interdict slavery in a New State, as a condition 
of admission ; and it reserves to the pen])le, or to iho States respective- 
ly, all powers not expressly granted to the Federal Government, or not 
necessary to carry those exjiressly graMt(>d into effect. Hut it express- 
ly authorizes Congress to interdict all tslave trade after 1^108 ; invests 
Congress with full governmental power over the Territories, says that 



43 

New States viay be, not that they shallhe, admitted ; and imposes no other 
restraint upon the discretion of Congress over such admission, than the 
guarantee of a republican government, and the refusal to divide a 
State, or to unite two or more States, without the consent of tlieir legis- 
latures, as well as of Congress. Where then is the constitutional 
compromise under which New States can claim sovereign power over 
slavery ? If such New States originate in Territory, Congressional 
gra7it, dependent on Congressional discretion, is their sole foundation for 
such institution. 

Under the " Compromise of the Constitution," the Slave States have 
denied all right of petition to Congress upon the subject of slavery. 
Where, in the Constitution, is such compromise ? The first article of 
the Amendments guarantees freedom of speech and the press, and the 
right of petition to the government for redress of grievances ; and as 
these compromises are plainly cxp?-essed, they cannot be contradicted or 
annulled by any compromises raised by explication or construction. 

Under the " Compromises of the Constitution," the Slave States have 
demanded of the Federal Government its interposition with foreign 
governments for the surrender of fugitive slaves. The Constitution 
contains no such compromise in terms. And as slaves are not recog- 
nized by the Laws of Nations as property, like cattle, or as criminals 
subject to mutual surrender or punishment, like pirates, and as the 
United States are subject to that code as one of the national family, such 
compromise cannot be raised by implication. 



CHAPTER III. 

Having considered the powers of the Federal Government over the 
slave trade, domestic and foreign, and having also considered all but 
one of the several " constitutional compromises" which the propagan- 
dists of slavery urge in support of that institution, I will now consider 
the most important of these alleged compromises, and will also consider 
the consequences of permitting slavery to extend indefinitely, and the 
consequences of its confinement within its present limits. 

Under these "Compromises of the Constitution," the Slave States 
have demanded the establishment of slavery in all new Territory. They 
say that the citizens of any State may carry and establish their slaves, 
as property, in any Territory of the tjnited States, and that all Acts of 
Congress forbidding this, are unconstitutional. As this pretension vir- 
tually abolishes the Federal Constitution, the constitutions of the several 
States, the Common Law, the Laws of Nations, and the principle of 
national independence, I will review it extensively. 

The first question presented by this pretension is. What is property ? 
The citizens of any State are authorized to carry their -property into any 
other of the States, or, with the permission of the Federal Government, 
into any Territory of the Union. But this property must be something 
which bears that definition in the State or Territory into which, and not 
merely in that from ivhich, it is carried. It must be property in a general 
sense, property under the Constitution and Laws of the United States, 
and of every State of the Confederacy. The right must be common to 
all the States and Territories ; a right in which all of them can partici- 
pate on equal terms. What then is property ? Here I must refer to 
that code of jurisprudence which prevails in every State of the Confede- 
racy, and is recognised by the United States, The Common Law ; for 



44 

what the Common Law recognises as property, is such in every State of 
this Union, and is such under the Constitution and Laws of" the United 
States. 

But does the Federal Constitution recognise the Common Law ? Let 
us see. "The privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be 
suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public 
safety may require it." Fed. Const., Art. L, Sec. IX.. CI. H. The 
writ of Habeas Corpus is a grand feature of the Conmion Law, founded 
upon one of its fundamental principles, the right of personal liberty. 
But wiiere shall we seek a definition of the Habeas Corpus thus men- 
tioned in the Constitution ? In the Common Law alone ; for in no other 
code older than the reign of Napoleon, is such process prescribed. By 
this mere mention of a process by its name, without definition or expla- 
nation, the Constitution refers to something well known, generally un- 
derstood, susceptible of explanation, and thus recognises the source of 
that explanation. Aud when a writ of Habeas Corpus is demanded of 
the Federal Government, what governmental power shall adjudicate it? 
The Federal Judiciary. Then does not this clause recognise the Com- 
mon Law as the code of the Federal Judiciary ? 

" The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United 
States, shall be removed from office, on impeachment for, and convic- 
tion of, treason, briber}-, or other higii crimes and misdemeanors." Fed. 
Con., Art. II., Sec. IV. Where shall we find an explanation o^ impeach- 
ment, convict io7i, treason, bribery, crimes, misdemeanors ? In the Com- 
mon Law. 

" Tlie trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be 
by jury." Fed. Con., Art. III., Sec. II., CI. III. To what code shall 
wc refer for a definition of jury ? To the only code in the world which 
recognised the institution wlien the Federal Constitution was adopted, 
the Common Law. And while such trials must be by jnry, how shall 
they be conducted 1 Upon what principles 1 By what forms ? We 
must ask the Common Law. 

" A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, 
who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall, on de- 
mand of the executive authority of the Slate from which he fled, be de- 
livered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime." 
Fed. Con., Art. IV., Sec. II., CI. II. While the constitutions or statutes 
of the several States may define treason against them, where shall we 
seek a definition of felony ? In the Common Law. And as the Com- 
mon Law, ill each State, recognises crimes not covered by its statutes, 
what authority but the Common Law can the demanding State show for 
the surrender of fugitives in such cases ? 

" The riglit of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, 
and ellects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be 
violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, sup- 
ported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to 
be searclied, and the persons or things to be seized." Fed. Constitution, 
Amendment IV. \\\m\ did the Congress which proposed, and the State 
Legislatures which adopted this amendment, mean by unreasonable 
searches and seizures, warrants, probable cause, oath, ajjirmation ? If a 
citizen be aggrieved by unreasonable searches or seizures, he must seek 
redress of the Judiciary, who must interpret these terms. And where 
shall the Judiciary seek light? In the Conmion Law. 

"No person shall be held to answer fjr a capital or other infamous 
crime, except on presentment or indictment of a Gram! Jury, except in 
cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual 



45 

service, in time of war, or public danger ; nor shall any person, for the 
same offence, be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb, nor shall be com- 
pelled in a criminal case to be witness against himself; nor be deprived 
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ; nor shall pri- 
vate property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Fed. 
Con., Amendment V. What is a present inent, an indictment, due process 
of law ? O^ IV hat law does this amendment require due process? What 
is a criminal, as distinct from any other case ? What is private property? 
The Common Law alone can answer these questions. 

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a 
speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury, of tlie State and district 
wherein the crime shall have been committed ; which district shall have 
been previously ascertained by law ; and to be informed of the nature 
and cause of the accusation ; to be confronted with the witnesses against 
him ; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; 
and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence." Fed. Constitu- 
tion, Amendment VI. What is a criminal prosecution? A trial by jury ? 
How shall an impartial ']\iYy be secured ? How shall the accused be in- 
formed of the nature or cause of the accusation ? What is being con- 
fronted with witnesses ? What is compulsory process for obtaining wit- 
nesses ? What is counsel? What is defence? We must ask the 
Common Law. 

" In suits at Common Law, where the value in controversy shall ex- 
ceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and 
no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of 
the United States, than according to the rules of the Common Law." 
Fed. Con., Amendment VII. Indeed ! Here the Constitution not only 
secures trial by jury in cases involving a value of more than twenty 
dollars, and thus far recognises the Common Law, but requires all cases 
tried by a jury, to be reviewed exclusively according to the Common 
Law, Hence this amendment not only recognises the Common Law, 
bnt where juries are required, repudiates every other code. 

" Excessive bail shall not be required ; nor excessive fines imposed ; 
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. F. C. Amendment VIII. 
What are iaiZ, and ^nes .? What bail or ?ines are excessive ? What 
punishments are cruel and unusual? We must ask the common Law, 

"The enumeration, in the constitution, of certain rights, shall not be 
construed to deny or disparage others, retained by the people. F, C. 
Amendment IX, What are rights? What is fZenwi of right ? The 
Connnon Law must explain, and consequently the Common Law must 
show what rights are retained by the people. 

The Common Law of England is the birthright, the inheritance of 
every person born in an Anglo-Saxon community ; and of course it was 
brought to every one of the Old Thirteen States by its English foun- 
ders, and is the birthright of their posterity. The Continental Con- 
gress, at their first session in September, 1774, in their Declaration of 
Rights, say that, " The respective Colonies are entitled to the Common 
Law of England, and especially to the inestimable privilege of being 
tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to that law." Then as 
the Convention of 1787 represented twelve Anglo-Saxon communities, 
possessing the Common Law as a birthright, and knowing no other 
code, they never could have intended, in the Federal Constitution, 
to recognise any other in the internal relations of the States with each 
other. And they did not. And they could not ; for they were merely au- 
thorized to devise a compact among communities already organized, 
and not to abolish or change their organization. 



46 

To show that the framers of the Constitution intended to recognise 
the Common Law as the code of the Federal Government, I will refer 
to eminent jurists, Chief Justices of the Federal Supreme Court. Chief 
Justice Elles«orlh, the first who sat on the Federal bench, appointed 
by Washington, and therefore entitled to some consideration, said in 
one of his decisions, "The Common Law of this country remains as 
it was before the Revolution." Chief Justice Marshall, a jurist whom 
I need not praise, in deciding the great case between Livingston and 
Jetlerson involving the hatture of New Orleans, said, " When our an- 
cestors emigrated to America, they brought with them the Common 
Law of their native country, so far as it was applicable to their new 
situation ; and I do not conceive that the Revolution in any degree 
changed the relations of man to man, or the law which regulates them. 
In breaking our political connection with the parent State, we did not 
break our connection with each other." Mr. Duponceau, in his " Dis- 
sertation on the jurisdiction of courts in the United States," says, "I 
consider the Conunon Law of England the ju^ commune {common laic) 
of the United States. I think I can lay it down as a correct principle, 
that tlie Common Law of England, as it was at the time of the Decla- 
ration of Independence, still continues to be the national law of this 
country, so far as it is applicable to our present state, and subject to 
the modifications it has received here in the course of half a century." 
The whole current of Federal legislation and jurisprudence recognise 
the principles of the Common Law as binding the Federal Govern- 
ment. 

If then the Common Law be the code of the Federal Government, how 
does it deal with slavery? The Common Law knows no slaves! It 
recognises no slavery ! It is an universal, unconditional act of eman- 
cipation! k anniliilates slavery whenever brought within its reach! 
It never touches fetters, manacles, or chains, unless imposed for crimes, 
but to rend them asunder, to knock them olF, and bid the bond go free ! 
Whenever and wherever a slave can stand in the sunshine of the Com- 
mon Law, "his bodv swells beyond the measure of his chains, which 
burst from around him ; and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and dis- 
enthralled by Ihis irresistible genius of universal emancipation !" 
Shall we consult the great lights of the English bench? Chief Jus- 
tice Holt says, " By the Common Law, no man can have property in 
another. The subjects of dominion or property are things, as contra- 
distinguished from persons.'' Chief Justice Mansfield says, '• The state 
of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced 
on any reasons, moral or political ; but only positive law, which pre- ; 
serves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from 
which it was created, are erased from the memory. It is so odious, 
that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law." 

I know that tliis hostility of the Common Law to slavery has been 
denied. Those learned in the law have asserted that, white slavery ex- 
isted in l%ngland, vcrv siiortly before the commencement of the Anglo- 
American Ci)loni(s, and that negro slavery is merely n shoot from the 
tree of I'-nglish villeinage. I know that wiiite slavery once existed in 
England in the severest modes, and can be traced to a Sa.xon origin ; 
and I trace its gradual decline to that X<irman conquest which is erro- 
neously made the scapegoat of all l^nglish tyrann es in the middle 
ages. But waving these points as foreign from my purpose, I find that 
villeinage in gross, or absolute slavery like our own, had totally disap- 
peared in England in the middle of the sixteenth century ; that villein- 
age regardant, a species of tenancy bound to the soil, had then nearly 



47 

disappeared ; and that an attempt to revive absolute slavery as a pu- 
nishment of crime, was then indignantly and etTectually resisted as in- 
consistent with the Common Law, and totally repugnant to popular senti- 
ment among all ranks. And I assert that the African slavery which 
ultimately reached the Anglo-American colonies, is of Portuguese and 
Spanish, and not of English origin. White slavery had disappeared 
from England in 1550, nearly sixty years before the first settlement at 
Jamestown, seventy years before the landing at Plymouth, and seventy 
years before the first cargo of African slaves entered James River in a 
Dutch ship, and about two hundred and twenty -five years before the 
Declaration of Independence. The opinion of Lord Mansfield, that 
slavery was repugnant to the Common Law, and from which I have 
already quoted, was delivered in 1772, four years before the Declara- 
tion of Independence ; and the opinion of the great and good Lord 
Holt, that, by the Common Law, no man can have property m another, 
was delivered about eighty years before that great event. Therefore 
I assert that slavery had disappeared from England, and was repug- 
nant to the Common Law, when the first Anglo-American colony was 
planted ; and that Negro slavery is no shoot from the tree of Saxon 
thraldom, or from that much wilder form of slavery, Norman villeinage. 

Then as the Common Law, thus repugnant to slavery, is constitu- 
tionally the code of the Federal Government, I will now consider its 
application to the Territories. All lands, districts, regions, or coun- 
tries within the boundaries of the United States, and not within the ex- 
clusive jurisdiction of any State, are the property of the United States 
in their Federal capacity ; and consequently the Federal Government 
have exclusive jurisdiction over them, legislative, judicial, and execu- 
tive. This jurisdiction may be partially dormant, not exercised, as in 
regions inhabited exclusively by the Aborigines. But it may be ex- 
ercised at any moment through an act of Congress; and whether exer- 
cised or not, it is absolute, exclusive, completely barring all other ju- 
risdictions. The usual exercise of this jurisdiction is through an act 
of Congress, establishing a territorial government. But without such 
act, the Common Law constitutionally reigns in every part of such 
Territory ; and hence if a crime be committed in such Territory, it may 
be tried within the nearest Federal District. An example of this oc- 
curred two or three years ago, in the trial, conviction, and execution, 
by the Federal Circuit Court for Missouri at St. Louis, of three or four 
American citizens, for the robbery and murder of a Mexican citizen of 
Santa Fe, perpetrated in what is called the Indian Territory. I also 
refer to the practice of the Federal Government in establishing in such 
unsettled Territory, forts and military posts for the protection of travel- 
lers, hunters, and emigrants. But leaving out of the argument all Ter- 
ritory not covered by a territorial government, I will consider the case 
of all such Territory thus specially organized. 

" The Congress shall have power to dispose of, and make all needful 
rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belong- 
ing to the United States ; and nothing in this constitution shall be so 
construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any 
particular State." F. C. Art. IV., Sect. III., Clause II. 

This invests the Federal Government with exclusive jurisdiction 
over the National Territory. And so careful were the Convention to 
guard this right, while they guarded the rights of the several States, 
that they would not leave either to be impaired by construction upon 
any other portion of the constitution, and therefore added this provi- 
sion concerning " any claiwas of the United States, or any particular 



48 

State." The clause recognises the Territories as the property of the 
Union ; and its proprietary rights have been exercised over the Territo- 
ries, from the adoption of the Constitution to the present time. As 
public lands, the territories are owned by the Union in absolute, un- 
conditional, allodial tenure, and therefore may be granted upon any 
conditions, whether in lease, fee conditional, fee simple, allodial, or 
not at all. Feudal tenures being inconsistent with American policy, 
Congress have never transferred the public lands, excepting in lease, 
as with the mineral lands, and allodial tenure, as in all other cases. 
But the conditions on which they may be granted depend on Congress- 
ional discretion. Whoever enters then) without Congressional authori- 
ty, is a trespasser, and may be ejected by due process of law. Then 
what power can prevent Congress from closing them against entry ? 
From enacting that, no more public lands shall be sold during the next 
century ? Only the people, speaking through the ballot box. If 
then the United States own these Territories in absolute property, and 
therefore may prescribe the conditions on which they may be en- 
tered by grantees, and only by grantees can they be entered at all, 
how preposterous is the doctrine that the citizens of any State may 
carry their slaves to these Territories as property ! if they cannot 
carry themselves there without Congressional permission, surely they 
cannot prescribe what they shall carry there as property. 

But as Congress may make all needful rules for the government of 
the Territories, Congress alone are judges of the need. The advo- 
cates of slavery would confine this power to rules absolutely necessary, 
and say that, as the exclusion of slavery is not indispensable, it cannot 
be excluded. But as the term needful must be taken in its current 
and popular signification, it covers not merely necessities, indispensabili- 
ties, but conveniences, jitililies, proprieties, expediencies, according to 
Congressional discretion. Hence the question lor Congressional de- 
cision is not whetiierthe Territories can exist as such, notwithstanding 
the burden of slavery, but whether slavery is useful to them. But 
the welfare of the Territories is not the only question tor Congress, in 
exercising this power; that of the Union also being a primary consi- 
deration. Hence in deciding whether the toleration or interdiction of 
slavery is needful, that is, useful, salutary, expedient. Congress must 
consider the interests of the United States, as well as of the Territories. 
A sound discretion for the whole, consistent with the claims of the 
United States and the several States, is the oiily constitutional restraint 
upon Congressional legislation for the Territories. And have any of 
the States claims to establish slavery in the Territories ! Claims to 
control the absolute property of the Union ! Then as the Federal 
Government have exclusive. jurisdiction over the Territories, and in 
establishing their jurisdiction, must establish the Common Law, I 
maintain tliat the Common Law nmst reign paramount, judicially ab- 
solute, in all the Territories, unless expressly exeepteil by Act of Con- 
gress. And as the Common Law knows no slavery, recognises no 
property in man, apjilies the term property to things only, and not to 
persons, citizens of Slave States cannot, of right, carry their slaves 
into a Territory and hold them there nii property. And as the Terri- 
tories are the absolute property of the Union, and as such may be 
closed against all farther entry, the citizens of no State can, of right, 
enter them with slaves or anything else. 

But the Common Law is not the only code to which we must refer 
for a definition of the term properly. The Laws of Aalions cover the 
subject, and that code is equally imperative with the Common Law in 



49 / 

denying property in ma7i. Are the Laws of Nations imperative upon 
the United States? They are so; and the obligation flows from, is 
incident to, inherent in, their nationality. Were their Constitution 
silent upon this point, they would still be bound, as one among the 
family of nations, by that code which all civilized nations mutually 
acknowledge. They have not entered this family as an Ishmaelite, a 
common disturber, disavowing allegiance to the social incidents of their 
position. This would make them pirates, enemies of mankind, legally 
liable to be subdued and denationalized by a combination of all nations 
for national and common safety. They have entered this family as a 
civilized nation, impliedly, neccessarily acknowledging their allegiance 
to the international code, and have been acknowledged as such by all 
its civilized members. Nor have they left this allegiance to necessary 
implication, having expressly acknowledged it in their compact with 
each other, the Federal Constitution. 

" No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation ; 
grant letters of marque and reprisal." (F. C, Art. I., Sec. X. 
Clause I.) 

" No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any imposts 
or duties on imports or exports, lay any duty on tonnage, keep troops, 
or ships of war, in time of peace, enter into any agreement or com- 
pact with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, 
or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay." (Art. I.,. 
Sec. X., Clause 11.) All the things here prohibited to the States 
involved relations with foreign nations, and consequently are acts of" 
nationality ; and they are forbidden to the States because they are ne- 
cessarily invested in the Federal Government. 

" The judicial power of the United States shall extend to all cases in: 
law and equity arising under treaties made, or which shall be made, under • 
their authority ; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public minis.- 
ters, and consuls ; to al! cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction ;. 
to controversies between a State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign, 
States, citizens or subjects." (F. C, Art. HI., Sec. II., Clause I.); 
Treaties are the compacts of nations with each other ; ambassadors^. 
public ministers and consuls, are national agents, representing one na- 
tion to another; admiralty and maritime jurisdiction is the jurisdietioni 
established by international law over commerce upon the ocean, the 
mutual intercourse of nations on their common highway ; controver- 
sies between a State of our nation or its citizens, and foreign States,, 
citizens or subjects, involve the rights of foreign nations, as well as; 
of the United States. Hence, any subject over which this clause gives 
jurisdiction to the Federal Judiciary, is covered, regulated, explained,, 
by the Laws of Nations; and hence this clause is an express recogni- 
tion of that code. Then, as that code must reign wherever the United 
States have jurisdiction, to that code must we refer for a definition of" 
properly beyond the jurisdiction of any State. Hence, while men are 
property in South Carolina, according to its positive laws, yet, when 
that State assumes to carry property beyond its own jurisdiction, it must 
use the term in the sense recognised by the world at large,by all nations in 
common, the sense explained by the Laws of Nations. Does this code 
acknowledge slavery ? It authorizes the slave trade ; for as its very 
foundation is the mutual independence of nations, it must allow one 
nation to sell its subjects, and another to buy them. But it does not au- 
thorize one nation to enslave the subjects of another without its con- 
sent, for it acknowledges the right of the nation aggrieved to declare 
4 



war against the aggressor, and requires all neutral nations to respect 
the belligerent rights of the aggrieved. Thus, if France should seize 
Russian subjects, and sell tliem in slavery to Spain, Russia would have 
just cause of war against France, and could demand of all nations to 
abstain from supplying France with arms, to respect its blockade of 
French ports. So say the Laws of Nations, and so far tliey do not 
recognise slavery. And if a slave escape from one nation to another, 
the latter is under no obligation, upon penalty of war, reprisal, or any- 
thing else, to surrender the slave to the former. Thus, if a slave 
escape from a French colony to Russia, the latter could re fuse to surrender 
it, saying that, if a slave under French, he was not a slave under Rus- 
sian laws ; and one nation is not obliged to recognise the positive laws 
of another concerning persons. A fugitive slave is not a criminal, 
whom nations are mutually bound to surrender; and as man is not 
property in all nations, and among European nations, is property only 
in two, the Laws of Nations do not recognise man as property in 
a general, international sense, like ships, money, or merchandise. 
Even nations which recognise slavery at home, as Russia and Turkey, 
do not acknowledge the slave laws of other nations; and hence, if a 
slave should flee to either of them, and l»e demanded, the answer would 
be, " this person may be a slave by your laws, but is not by ours ; and 
as we do not recognise ?/our slave laws, they being no part of the laws 
of nations, this fugitive is free on our soil." Slaveholders have applied 
to the Federal Government for the restoration of slaves fugitive to the 
British colonies, and have been told that, so soon as a slave touches 
British soil, he is free. Has anybody supposed that such refusal was a 
legitimate cause of war ? The Federal Government has not. 

The advocates of slavery may say that the laws of nations reign in 
the Territories between American citizens and foreigners, and not 
"between American citizens of the same or dilFerent States, the sub- 
jects of the same nation. But beyond the States, the citizens of each 
are subject to the laws of the United States, which include the Common 
Law and the Laws of Nations ; and hence for the definition of terms used 
in a general sense, they must refer to the Laws of Nations, if they are 
not estopped l)y the Common Law. If a citizen of South Carolina and a 
citizen of Michigan have a controversy about a ship or cargo on Lake 
Huron, shall they refer for a definition of ship and cargo, and their re- 
spective rights of property under them, to the laws of South Carolina 
or Michigan? No ! But to that part of the Laws of Nations embracing 
■" admindty and maritime jurisdiction." 

Those who claim as a conslitutional rigJU, the establishment of 
slavery in the Territories, rest it upon the constitutional compromises. 
Which of these compromises will tiiey plead for it ? The toleration of 
the slave trade to the OKI Thirteen only till 1808, and the unlimited 
power of Congress to suppress it afterwards? The mutual obligations 
of the States to surrender fugitive slaves ? The slave basis of represen- 
tation and direct taxation ? These are all tho constitutional compromises 
upon slavcr\^ ; and I cannot perceive where either of thenj touches this 
claim to carry slavery into the Territories! And they rest this claim 
on amendments IX. and X. concerning rights and powers reserved to the 
States or the people ! But as they urge this claim as a constitutional 
right, they must not i)lead for it a want of constitutwnal power. If it be 
a right founded on constitutional compromise, it cannot be a right of re- 
served sorcrcignty ; and if a riglit of reserved sovereignly, it cannot be 
f()im(led on constitutional compromise. If a right at all, it nmst be 
founded on one or the other ; for it cannot be founded on both, anJ 



51 

much less on either, according to the convenience of the claimants. If 
it be founded on reserved sovereignty, I ask what right each State has 
reserved over the Territories ? The rights of reserved sovereignty are 
those of each State within its own jurisdiction, and not rights beyond it. 
Then as the Constitution invests the Federal Government with exclusive 
jurisdiction over the Territories, and makes the Common Law and the 
Laws of Nations the codes of that government, this power 7nay forbid 
slavery in the Territories, and these codes, which do not recognise 
slavery, reign there and do forbid it. 

A fundamental principle of all codes, national and municipal, is that 
no society can extend its laws beyond its own boundaries, unless by 
conquest or compact. Slavery is always the creature of jjositive law, 
and therefore confined to the society which establishes it, and necessa- 
rily cognisable by no other. Hence while South Carolina and Virginia 
may recognise slavery within their respective jurisdictions, neither can 
transfer its slavery to the other without its consent, and neitlier is obliged 
to recognise the slavery of the other. Were they independent nations, 
the laws of nations would protect either from any such demand of the 
other, though they might mutually consent to it by treaty. But as 
integral parts of the same nation, they are restrained from such treaties 
or mutual recognition by the Federal Constitution. Even the provision 
for the surrender of fugitive slaves is no recognition, by one State, of 
slavery ia another ; for the Federal Government alone, and not the 
State Governments, can legislate to enforce it. If then this claim be 
allowed, what are the consequences ? The Federal Constitution is 
abolished, the reserved rights of the States are extinguished, all muni- 
cipal and national identities are destroyed, and the whole world is 
mingled and confounded in universal anarchy. If the claimants can 
thus overstep the constitutional barriers, they can overcome the funda- 
mental principles of nationality and municipality, division and mutual 
independence ; and hence if a slave State can extend her jurisdiction 
over the Territories of the Union, she can extend it over every other 
community. Under this power, a citizen of South Carolina may 
carry his slaves into Pennsylvania, and convert it into a slave State ! 
He may transfer them to England, and repeal its laws and subvert its 
constitution ! The claim needs only a plain statement, to demonstrate its 
absurdity. 

But the modern propagandists of slavery assert that Congress has 
£10 constitutional power to legislate on the subject of slavery. As well 
might they deny its constitutional power to legislate on the subject of 
piracy or murder! Under what authority did Congress, in 1789, 
adopt the ordinance of 1787 ? Or exempt the Georgia Western Ter- 
ritory from this ordinance in 1798 ? Or prohibit all slave trade to 
Louisiana in 1804 ? Or the foreign slave trade to the whole Union in 
1808 ? And they assert that Congress has never created slavery by 
legislation! And the inference to which they here point is that, if 
Congress cannot create, therefore it cvluwoX. forbid slavery in the Terri- 
tories. The doctrine is both compendious and comprehensive enough 
for the establishment of slavery in all new Territories! But under 
what authority did Congress exempt Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, 
Louisiana, while Territories, from the ordinance of 1787 ? Under 
what authority did it make the Missouri Compromise ? And what less 
than Congressional legislation to create slavery by implication, do the 
propagandists now demand, in urging the extension of that compromise 
over all territory that may be acquired from Mexico ? 

Whence proceed these demands ? While preferred by all the Slave 



States, even by the new, which have no reserved sovereignty upon 
any subject, and which derive all their rights over the slavery from 
Congressional Compact, they are most pertinaciously urged by the two 
States which, in the Federal Convention, under threats of separation 
and foreign alliance, demanded perpetuity in the slave trade ! They 
are urged most strenuously by South Carolina and Georgia. Let us 
remember that, solely through the national independence achieved by 
the Revolution, were these two States enabled to appear in the Conven- 
tion, and co-operate with the rest in establishing a national govern- 
ment. Had the Thirteen States remained in colonial vassalage in 1787, 
South Carolina and Georgia would have had no power to prescribe 
terms for slavery, or anything else. And had these two States re- 
mained in such vassalage in 1836, their slaves would have been eman- 
cipated by the parent country without asking their consent, and with 
or witliout compensation, at that parent's discretion. Were they in- 
debted to the other Colonies as well as to themselves, for that emanci- 
pation from political bondage which saved them from such contingen- 
cies ? Presenting, in the Convention, the alternative of separation or 
unlimited and perpetual license in the slave trade, and indebted for 
this power to the success of the Revolution, they ought to have been 
able to show, either that, without their efforts the Revolution would 
have failed, or that, their efforts were equal to those of all or any of 
the other Colonies. On this point, what says history ? The whole 
number of regular troops furnished to the Continental armies during 
the Revolution, was 261,014. 

Of these the four New England States furnished . . 147,441 

The three Middle States, New York, New Jersey and 

Pennsylvania, furnished 56,1576 

The six Southern States, Delaware, Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia, .... 56,997 

Of those furnished by New England, Massachusetts 
supplied 68,000!!!* 

As a son of Massachusetts, aye ! and of that "Cradle 
-of Liberty," Boston, and a descendant of Amf who led 
the Pilgrims to victory at Mount Hope, I never feel so 
proud, as when beholding that Revolutionary muster 
roll! Sixty-eight Thousand ! "Massachusetts! there 
she stands! Look at her!" With Sixty-eight Thou- 
sand Revolutionary heroes, " she needs no eulogy !"| 

Of those furnished by New England, Connecticut 

supplied 31,393 

Of those furnished by the Southern States, South 

Carolina supplied 2j^i:: 

And Georgia 2,i97m 

■In 1790, the free white population of all New Eng- 
land was 995,927 

That of the three Middle States, was 922,148 

That of the Six Southern States, of which Kentucky 
and Tonnes.see were parts during the Revolution, 
was 1,389,837 

■* 07,907. 
t Col. Church. 

I See Mr. Webster's magnificent, annihilating reply to Col. Haynes in the 
Senate, in 1830. 



53 

Assuming that the population of the three sections bore the same pro- 
portion to each other during the Revolution, as in 1790, we find that 
New England, with a population less than that of the Southern States by 
392,91o1"urnished more troops than those States by 90,144 ; and that 
all the Free States, with a population exceeding that of the Southern by 
only 529,238, furnished more troops than the Southern by 147,015. 

New Hampshire, with a free white population just equal to that of 
South Carolina, furnished 25,000 troops; more than the latter by 
21,000. Little Rhode Island, with a free white population exceeding 
that of Georgia by only 15,000, furnished 10,000 troops, more than 
the latter by 7,000. 

The proportion of troops to population was, in New 

England, 1 to 7 

In the three Middle States, 1 to 16^ 

in the six Southern States, 1 to 24 

In Massachusetts, 1 to 7 

In Connecticut, 1 to 7^ 

In Pennsylvania, 1 to 15 

In Virginia, 1 to 22 

In Georgia, 1 to 20 

In South Carolina, 1 to 37 

As New England furnished 147,000 troops, the Southern States, in 
the same proportion of troops to population, should have furnished 
205,000 ; more than they did supply by 148,000 ! As all the Free 
States furnished 204,000 troops, the Southern, in the same proportion, 
should have furnished 147,000 ; more than they did supply by 90,000 ! 
As Connecticut, with a free white population of 236,000, furnished 
31,400 troops. South Carolina and Georgia should have furnished 
26,000 ; m/)re than they did supply by about 19,500 ! As the Southern 
States furnished 57,000, New England, in the same proportion, should 
have furaished only 40,000, less than it did by 107,000 ! And in the 
same proportion, all the Free States should have furnished only 78,000 ; 
less than they did by 126,000 ! As South Carolina furnished 3,872, 
Massachusetts should have furnished only 10,000 ; less than it did by 
58,000 ! As Georgia furnished only 2,697, Connecticut should have 
furnished only 12,000; less than it did by 19,400! As Virginia fur- 
nished about 21,000, New Hampshire should have furnished only 
5,500; less than it did by 19,500! In the proportion of Virginia, 
Massachusetts should have furnished 14,600; less than it did by 
53,400 ! In the proportion of Massachusetts, Virginia should have 
furnished 98,000 : 'more than it did by 77,000 ! 

In whatever proportion we compare the Free and Slave States in 
the military efforts of the Revolution, we shall find that, if the Slave 
States discharged the whole of their duty, the Middle States exceeded, 
and the New England States far exceeded theirs; and that, if the Free 
States did no more than their duty, the Slave States were delinquent in theirs, 
far behind the Middle States, and very far behind New England. 

With such facts before them, had South Carolina and Georgia a moral right to 
offer, for months successively, in the Federal Convention, the alternative of in- 
terminable license in the slave trade, or separation and foreign alliance .' Or had 
Georgia a moral right, in ceding its Western Territory to the Union in 179S, 
to insist on closing it against the ordinance of 1787, and thus dooming it to all 
the curses of slavery ? Or had the Slave States, in 1S04, a moral right to close 
Louisiana against this ordinance, thus dooming it to the same mischief? Or 
when Missouri was admitted, to inflict the same blight upon that State, and to 
extend it over all the territory south of lat. 36" 30' ? Or when Florida was an- 
nexed in 1S20, to consign it to the same curse .' We hear much about the " Chi- 
valry of the South ;" I would not undervalue Southern effort in the days that 



54" 

tried men's bodies as well as souls ; or refuse a tribute of grateful respect, of pa- 
triotic reverence, to the memories of Sumpter and Marion and their gallant com- 
panions. But while South Carolina and Georgia were making their compara- 
tively feeble efforts in the cause of national emancipation, where were the chi- 
valry of the North, tlie Middle, tlie Free States? Pouring out their blood like 
water upon the heiglit^s of Charlestown ! Leaving their bones to bleach upon 
tlip plains of Long Island! Hearing tlieir victorious banners upon the fields of 
Bennington and S.iratoga I Dyeing the snows with the blood of their bare feet, 
in their wintry march to victory at Trenton and Princeton ! Slowly sinking under 
tortures which British cruelty alone could inflict, and with constanc}" which Bri- 
tish cruelty could not subdue, yielding their last breath in prayers for their coun- 
try, amid the liorrors of the Sugar House in New York and the Prison Ship at the 
Wallabout! And as the glorious consummation of all their daring and suffering and 
sacrifice for National Independence, tearing down and banishing for ever from 
their sliores, tlie flag of tiicir proud oppressors at Yorktown ! Was there 
no chivalry in New England, sending forth one in seven of its people to do 
battle in the holy cause of national independence? Or in the Middle Stales, 
sending forth one in sixteen to the same glorious service? Lei the whole Slave 
States, sending fourth one in twenty-four, or Virginia, sending forth one in twenty- 
two, or South Carolina, sending forth one in thirty-seven, and also sending forth 
uiiainst this sacred cause twenty Tories for every one found in New England, an- 
swer the question ! Such was A'ort/iem Chivalry ! Such were its daring and its 
constancy, its deeds and its sufferings ! And when Southern chivalry makes un- 
conscionable demands, let Northern chivalry show, in justification of its- uncom- 
promising resistance, the testimonials of its efforts in the cause of national inde- 
pendence, bearing the names of 201,000 Ruvolutionary heroes. If Revolutionary 
witnesses be estimated by numbers, these 204,000 are an all-suIEcicnt host against 
the 57,000 of the Slave States ! 

The modern propagandists will say that the Slave States coold not spare more to 
the Continental armies, because their men were confined at home, to restrain the 
slaves from rebellion ; and they will say that the British Government, after filling 
the country with slaves to promote tlieir trading policy, offered emancipation to 
all who would join their armies against the Colonists. This sustains the ob- 
jections against slavery urged by Madison and Mason, and the other great lights 
of Virginia, in the Federal and their State Conventions. If the military 
population of the Slave States were prevented from equal exertion with 
the Free, against the common foreign enemy, through fear of insurrection among 
enemies in their own household, then the Revolution was tar less their work than 
that of the Free States; then, without the eflbrts of the Free States, the yoke of 
Colonial bondage had never been broken. With this essential element of weak- 
ness, had South Carolina and Georgia a moral right to dictate laws to the Conven- 
tion ? or tlie Slave States to insist on the extension of slavery in 1199? in n9S? 
in HOI ? in lv20 ? 

The propagandists will say that the battles of the Revolution were fought on 
Southern soil, by the Southern militia, who had no cause for turning out till the 
enemy came among tliem, and then turned out collectively. Without referring 
to tlie alacrity, the valor, the efficiency iif the Northern militia, when the North 
was tlie theatre of contest, I reply that, while 10,000 militia were furnished by 
the Slave States, '^'.i.OOO were furnished by New England alone. But had the 
Slave States supplied the regular army as abundantly as the Free, would the «»ne- 
my have reached their soil ? Would the contest have endured for seven years ? 
Would it have drawn so cojiiously, so sadly, upon the best blood of the country ? 
Had the Slave States furnished the '.lO.OOO' more troops that would have placed 
them on equality with all the Free States, as gallant as the riT.OOO which they did 
furni.-<li, would not the contest have terminated sooner ? And if s<^ iiad they fur- 
nished the 1 1^,000 more which would have placed them on an equality with New 
England, might not British power have been crushed, almost at the commence- 
ment of the contest ? If new England had done no more than the Slave States, in 
proportion to population, its supply of troops would have been diminished by 
107,000; and the same |>roportioMat"e equality of ellbrt between the Slave and all 
the Free States, would have diniinisiied the supply o{ tiie latter by r2t),O0O. As 
the holy cause was contested for seven years, and reipiircd tiie aid of a gallant 
and chivalrous ally, and the occasional and equally gallant cfiorts of the militia 
from all the States, in addition to'26i.000 regular Continental champions, what 
would iiave been its late, had these regular Continental chamjiions been only 
l.'il.OOO, or i:).''),(M10, instead of 201,000? That cause could not have spared 
107,000, much less I2r.,000, from the gallant spirits who sustained it through seven 
doubtful vears, to its glorious termination. Yet it must have spared them, had 
New England alone, or all the Free States, sent forth to fight its battles no greater 



55 

proportion of their brave sons, than the "Chivalry of the South." In view of 
these facts, the positions assumed by South Carolina and Georgia in the Conven- 
tion, and by all the Slave States ever since, are hardly consistent with justice. As 
they should have remembered then and afterwards, so should they remember now, 
that, to the blood of the Free States, far more than to their own, are they in- 
debted for th« high privileges of national independence and self-government. Yet 
Kow-, even now, does South Carolina, with her Revolutionary mus|pr roll of 3900 
men, make unconscionable demands upon the Free States, to whose •20'1,000 Revo- 
lutionary heroes is sh« indebted for redemption from Colonial bondage. Aye ! and 
for her present privilege, which she uses with no stinting parsimony, no grudg- 
ing economy, of being politically arrogant and exacting with impunity ! Will the 
Free States longer yield to these demands, and extend and perpetuate a mischief 
iwhich made Jetlerson tremble for the justice of Heaven on his country ? If ap- 
peals to their chivalry be vain, let them not be deaf to the warning voice of 
Justice, or the imploring cries of Humanity. 

The modern propagandists, not only preaching false doctrines, but misrepre- 
senting historical facts, now say what they would not have said in the presidency 
■of Jefierson, that the Ordinance of 1787 was " an interpolation in the Democratic 
■creed." If by the Democratic creed they mean the universal promjjtings of human 
instinct, the inductions of common sense, and the declarations through Moses 
and the Prophets and the Saviour, all proclaiming that personal liberty is a natu- 
s-ai, congenial, inalienable right, and repeated in the Declaration of Independence, 
saying that all men are created etjual, how can they stigmatize an act in obedience 
4o ail their united voices, against slavery, as an interpolation upon the Democra- 
tic creed ? If the Democratic creed came from God, and it does so according to 
any reading of both Nature and Revelation, a human provision in defence of natu- 
a-al rights is no interpolation. Do they mean the creed of that political association 
called the Democratic party ? But this association was not known till after the 
•ordinance of 1 787 was unanimously adopted by the Continental Congress, and re- 
-snacted by the first Congress in 17S9. The Revolution exhibited no Democracy, 
RIO Federalism, as partisan designations. The Colonists knew Democracy in the 
natural rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Inde[)endence, and in the conven- 
Sionai rights inherited from their fatherland. And they knew Federalism in 
ttheir union and confederation against oppression, and for national independence. 
They called themselves " Whigs" and " Sons of Liberty," and not " Democrats" 
or " Federalists." The partisan distinction between "Democrats" and "Fede- 
ralists" first appeared in the State Conventions to which was submitted the Fede- 
ral Constitution; the " Democrats," foremost among whom was Rhode Island, and 
forward among whom was Massachusetts, opposing the Constitution because it 
extinguished too much of State rights; and the Federalists, foremost among whom 
was Georgia, and forward among whom was South Carolina, defending it because it 
was better for themfieives, than any other constitution within their reach. In Georgia, 
which adopted the Constitution unanimously, and South Carolina, which gave a 
vote of 184 against 38, a majority of 73 in a convention of 222 delegates, a princi- 
pal argument in its favor was the toleration of the Slave trade for twenty years, 
after they had failed in attempting to render it perpetual. In Virginia, which 
gave a majority of 10 only in a Convention of 16S, and therefore belonged to the 
■" Democratic" party in the State Conventions, a principal argument against the 
Constitution was this temporary toleration of the slave trade. Nobody, at this 
■day, will doubt the " Democracy " of Jefferson, the High Priest, the Primate, the 
very Sovereign Pontiff' of his political church; or of Madison, who, like Samuel 
in the Temple, was an early minister at its altars. If their well known opposition 
to slavery were inconsistent with the " Democratic creed," out of their own 
mouths are they condemned. Then as the " Democratic party " was not born when 
the ordinance of 1787 was adopted, it can be no interpolation upon that party's 
•creed. And if the ordinance be inconsistent with that creed, the censure is due 
to Jeflerson, Madison, Mason, Randolph, Pendleton and others, the Grand Coun- 
cil, Sanhedrim, Synod, consistory or consociation of " Democrats" by whom that 
creed svas compiled and promulgated. And South Carolina and Georgia profess to 
be partizans of "■Sfa/e ri'g^/s," and censure Rhode Island and Massachusetts as 
partizans of "cortio/irfa^iori." If sustentation of" State rights" he an article of the 
"Democratic creed," the records of the State Conventions show that tho Constitu- 
tion was opposed by Massachusetts and Rhode Island, because it invaded State rights 
and tended to consolidation, and was supported by South Carolina and Georgia, 
because it committed the consolidative power of the Federal Government to the 
sustentation of their" peculiar institution," their traffic in human rights. When, 
in the face of such facts, the propagandists pronounce the ordinance of 17S7 an 
" interpolation upon the Democratic creed," they exhibit profound ignorance of 
the " Thirty-nine Articles" of that creed, and seem scarcely to have reached its 



" Shorter Catechism." As well mipht they pronounce Leviticus an interpolation 
upon the Saybrook Platform, or Magna'Charta an infraction of the Federal 
Constitution ! 

Havinii thus far considered slavery from the commencement of the Revolution to 
the present day, I will briefly consider it in connexion with the future. To pro- 
vide for that future wisely, we must carefully study the past ; and if, in the history 
of that past, we find a miijhty mischief throwing; from a small beginning, till it 
threatens to overwhelm the fabric of the Revolution, we must either leave that 
fabric to its fate, or leave no effort untried to arrest the mischief If the citizens 
of the Slave States may carry their slaves, as property, into the Territories, slavery 
may be extended over all the remaining Territories of the Union, and all that may 
yet be acquired The present Territories are Nebraska, Minisnta, Missouri, New 
Mexico, Oregon, and California, the wiiole including an area equal to that of the 
thirty present States. Here, then, is Territory enough for thirty new States: and 
if only one-half of it can sustain a slave, or any population, though three-fourths 
of it are equ.il, in resources, to any three-fourths of the present Slates, and every 
new State in it be delivered to slavery, what will hereafter be the proportion of 
Slave and free States in the Federal Government .' Twenty-nine to si.iteen ! 
Then they will stand in the Senate as fifty-eight to thirty-two • .And if the fifteen 
new States be half as populous in proportion to territory, as the thirty Old, and 
the present ratio of representation be used as a basis of calculation, the relative 
strength of the Slave and Free States in the House of Representatives, will be as 
two hundred and four to one hundred and thirty. eight ! Upon the most favorable 
calculation for the Free States, the Slave State's will have in each House of Con- 
gress a tvurking majority at least .' 

The propagandists will say that all territory north of lat. 36.30 is exempted from 
slavery by the Missouri com|)romise. But if they can carry slaves into the Ter- 
ritories under a constitutional right, this compromise is unconstitutional and vir- 
tually repealed. And they say that the present territory north of this line will not 
sustain a slave population. While the southern boundary of Missouri is lat. 3o 30; 
its northerii is lat. 40.30, a line including two-thirds of New Jersey, one-half of 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, one-third of Nebraska, and iiearlv all New 
Mexico and Upper California. And these five Free States, the two first "of which 
once held slaves, and the three last of which would now have been Slave States, 
had they iiot been rescued from the calamity by that " interpolation upon the 
Democratic creed," the ordinance of 17s~, could physically support a slave popu- 
lation for two centuries henceforward. The slaves of Missouri, 3000 in liiO, 
10,000 in lv20, 2r),000 in 1^30, 58,000 in IStO, will probably exceed 135,(M)0 in 
1850. Then if Missouri will support a slave population, why will not Nebraska, 
directly west of Missouri and Arkansas, and watered by the Missouri, the Platte, 
the Kansas, and their large tributaries? And if Oregon may be opened to 
slavery, a point for whicli the propagandists contend, why may not New Mexico 
and Caiiforniu ? They tell us that only a small portion of New Mexico and Califor- 
nia will sustain slavery. Il the whole of Mexico, excepting a narrow strij) on the 
north, be south of lat. 30.4.'), or "Mason's and Dixon's line," the northern boun- 
dary of slavery in the Old States, why may it not support a slave population as 
well as Delaware, Maryland Virginia, and Kentucky? These four States, pre- 
senting, like Mexico, a surface of mountains and valleys, contained, in 1S40, 
724 ,OnO slaves. Then if nearly all Mexico be south of "Mason's and Dixon's 
Line," the northern boundary of slavery in the Old States, and even south of lat. 
3f).3ii, the SDUtliern boundary of Missouri, and the nortiiern boundary of slavery 
under the Missouri comjjromise, and the most fertile half of it be south of Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, why can it not maintain a slave population 
as well as any State of our Union ? Upon tlie authority of one who has resided in 
Mexico in a diplomatic capacity, professes to umierstand it thoroughly, and has 
"written a book about it," the j)ro))agandists say that the intri>duction of slavery 
into Mexico is impossible. It did once exist tiiere, and would probably have ex- 
isted there nuw, as in Cuba and Purto Rico, had it remained a Spanish colony. 
And while they pronounce slavery an impossibility in Mexico, they say that cer- 
tain productions peculiar to warm climates, as cotton, sugar, rice, and indigo, can 
be cultivated on American soil only by negro slavery. But the whole coast of 
Mexico, Atlantic an<! Pacific, produces everything svhich, according to the poli- 
tical economy of South Carolina, requires a high temperature and slave labor; and 
its high plains and fertile valleys jModuce colli-e and the orangi', which reipiire, 
like the sugar-cane, entire exemption from frost. Will they tell us that alluvial 
regions only will support slavery ? The two coasts of Mexico and extensive regions 
along its great rivers, arc alluvial. And if alluvial soil is necessary to slavery, how 
is it supported in the middle regions of Mar) land, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, 
Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky ? If even the alluvial regions of Maryland a"d 



57 

Virginia, abounding; in slaves, cannot produce cotton, sugar, coftee, or indigo, 
while the uplands of Mexico, above even the level of the Blue Ridge, produce 
every one of them abundantly, why cannot Mexico sustain slave labor ? And if 
Cuba, rising abruptly in lofty peaks, without an acre of alluvial soil, and further 
north than onc»-half of Mexico, is cultivated almost exclusively by slave labor, 
why cannot slavery be sustained in Mexico ? They know better than these denials 
indicate, and now fabricate this species of " public opinion," for the purpose of 
dooming every square mile of Mexico to slavery, as fast as it shall be acquired as 
territory. At the commencement of the Mexican war, the fertility of New Mexico 
was boundless, California was an El Dorado, and all Mexico a paradise, inviting 
Anglo-American enterprise to redeem it from Creole anarchy and Aboriginal im- 
becility. But the " Wilmot Proviso" came, and like an enchanter of Spanish or 
a magician of Arabian romance, has suddenly transformed this paradise into a 
desert, where no spring gushes, no brook meanders, no flower blooms, no bird 
sings, and where no slave can toil in hopeless bondage ! But taking their present 
statements, conjured into utterance by the wand of Mr. Wilmot, so totally variant 
from those current before that wand was flourished, and admitting that slavery can- 
not exist in any present territory north of lat 36.30, or in any that may be acquired 
from Mexico, whence, I ask, comes all this excitement about " Wilmot Provisos" 
and " constitutional rights ?" If slavery cannot travel beyond Southern Nebraska, 
large enough only for two slave States, are the slaveholders wise in being frightened 
from their propriety by the "Wilmot Proviso," and in threatening to " go the 
death" for their " peculiar institution," as if it were the " Sugar" of the Nullifiers .' 
The present balance cannot endure long, if the supply of Slave States is ex- 
hausted in two from Nebraska, while a dozen Free States are growing in the fer- 
tile territories north of lat. 3G.30 and in Oregon. Why, then, do they threaten 
to quarrel for the extension of slavery over regions where, according to their own 
statements, it cannot exist .' Do they see the sceptre departing from Judah .' 
And would they arrest it by extending slavery over all present territory, and by 
carrying it to Mexico ? 

The propagandists pronounce the " Wilmot Proviso" a mischievous abstraction. 
If it be an abstraction, where is the mischief, if its application to present or new 
territory can produce no change in their social or political relations .' But if it 
be a mere abstraction, totally inoperative in application, it involves a principle 
which every professing republican must hold sacred, or confess an enormous in- 
consistency. As an abstraction, it is an oath of allegiance to the holy cause of hu- 
man rights, human equality ; to those rights proclaimed as Revelation in the New 
Testament, and as the axiom of all just government in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. In proposing this abstraction, the Free States ask not their Southern 
brethren to disturb their present social relations ; to emancipate their bondmen. 
They merely ask them, as a boon to humanity, as obedience to the injunctions of 
Him whom both North and South acknowledge, whether He speak through 
Moses or the Saviour, as fidelity to the principles of the Revolution and the Fe- 
deral Constitution, to stay the plague of slavery from afflicting new regions. 
And in reply, their Southern brethren ask them to contravene the principles of 
the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution, to trample upon 
the highest interests of human nature, to violate the commands of God, ^o make 
all their professions of liberty and equality and philanthropy a mockery and a 
lie, and employ the sword of Freedom in' hewing down the Rights of Man ! 
In this contest "for abstractions, the men of the Free States, if true to duty, will 
say that, before another acre of land shall be surrendered to slavery, their blood 
shall flow like water ! 

The propagandists say that, the extension of slavery to new territory will soon 
remove it from Marvland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. The slaves of 
these States were 590,000 in ISIO, 670,000 in 1S20, 762,000 in 1830, and 775,00© 
in 1S40 ; the increase being 185,000 in 30 years, during which they were open to 
the drains of Georgia and the New States. When, according to this ratio, will 
slavery be extirpated from the Old States ? Each New Slave State or Territory gives 
to slavery a longer lease of life in each Old State. I know that Slavery, in con- 
flict with immutable physical and moral laws, contains the seeds of its own dis- 
solution, ruining every land which it cultivates, and finally extinguishing itself. 
It was near its appointed end in Jamaica, and must soon have been extinguished 
in emanci[)ation or blood. The slaves of Jamaica would have finally exterminated 
their owners, and then amid their mountain fastnesses, have defied the power of 
the British empire The Maroons, or insurgent Negroes of Jamaica, were once 
a formidable foe to British power, and the insurgent Negroes of Hispaniola suc- 
cessfully resisted the far greater military power of France. But these are 
islands, where slavery could not be prolonged by extension to contiguous re- 
gions ; and when slavery is thus confined, its evil forces must eventually explode, 



60 

because they cannot be drained through the safety-valve of extension. Had the 
ordinance of 17S7 been apjjlied to Tennessee, the Georsia Western Territory, 
Louisiana, Florida, the colored population, accumulating in Delaware, Maryland, 
Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, would have imposed upon those States a neces- 
sity of seeking a drain in African colonization, and by this time would have 
brought slavery near extinction in the United States. But the creation of new 
markets in the Territories established in Debiware, Maryland, and Virginia, the 
iniquities and horrors of slave-breed inn, and has converted the sons of those noble 
Revolutionary sires who set their faces and raised their voices against slavery, into 
dealers in human flesh, gorged with the wages of sin. Of all tiie evils which the 
God of Justice has stamped upon slavery, in retribution of His violated laws, 
slave-breeding is the most awful ! It traffics in the holiest of relations ! It makes 
merchandise of all the instincts through which Go<l tits men for society and moral 
government ! It stifles all the faculties through which man can aspire to Heaven, 
in the blind instincts of the brute, with nothing to love, nothing to fear, nothing 
to hope! To find on earth the veriest type of Hell, we must seek the pastures 
and the stalls of the slave-breeder ! Yet awful as are its iniquities, it is fated to 
overrun every present slave State of this Union, so lon^ as it can find new Terri- 
tory to feed upon. At the close of Hie Revolution, Maryland had begun to decline 
under the evils of slave cultivation. Larsje tracts of its "once fertile lands had been 
long before e.vhausted and abandoned, and were then recovering their natural ferti- 
lity under the natural process of spontaneous production and decay. Enterprise 
from the Northern and Middle States then souirht these abandoned lands, and made 
them prosper under free labor ; and new Territory being opened to slavery, many 
slaveholders emigrated to them with then property, while others, more sagacious, 
seeing the result of free labor directly before them, sold their slaves to the South, 
and placed their lands under this better system. Thus has the population of 
Maryland been continually changing, by the relative increase of the white over 
the colored, and of the Northern and Middle over the Southern stock. Its free 
population was 217,00) in 179U, •23'),00:j in IbOO. -209,000 in 1810, 300,000 in 1820, 
3.^5,000 in IS3U, and 3SO,000 in IS-lO; and its slave population was 103,000 in 
1790, 106,000 in ISOO, 111,000 in ISIO, 107,000 in 1820, 102,000 in 1-^30, and only 
90,000 in IS-lu. This shows an increase in free population, of 19,0(»0 in the first 
period, 33,000 in the second, 31,000 in the third, 3.5,0(X) in the fourth, and 45,000 
in the fifth ; and of slave population, an increase of only 3000 in the first period, 
of only r)000 in the second period, and a decrease of 4000 in the third, 9l>'X) in the 
fourth, and 12,(i00 in the fifth period. Thus while the free population has con- 
tinually increased during fifty years, the slave population slightly increased during 
twenty, and declined during thirty years of the same period; and while the 
amount of increase in the free population was greater, so was the amount 
o( decrease 'n\ ihe sldve population, in each ten years of the fifty. These facts 
show that Maryland, since 1790, has been under the progress of renovation by the 
immigration of whites and emigration of slaves, and the substitution of free for 
slave labor ; and as this substitution has been chiefly upon lands previously ex- 
hausted by slavery, they show that Maryland, having reached its culminating 
point of pros|)erity under slavery, had begun fo decline under it, and is now 
recovering under its gradual removal. Hence the course of slavery on a continent, 
where it can expand, and after it has exhausted one region, can be transferred 
to another, is first to redeem a wilderness, tlien to exhaust the region redeemed, 
then to seek new regions, leaving the abandoned to free labor. But is not 
this an argument f ^r slavery ? No. In the Free States we have witnessed 
no culminating puint of temporary prosperity, no commencement of decline, 
no exhaustion of soil, no succession of one set of proprietors by another more enter- 
prisinii and sagacious, no substitution of improving for exhausting labor, no com- 
mencement of recovery after exhaustion. They have continually advanced in popu- 
lation and every species of improvement. In 1 7'.iO, Maine contained <.iii,000 free in- 
habitants, less than M irylaiid by ril.DJO. In IMO, Miine contained .'jO.'.OJO, more 
than -Maryland by l.Vi.OoO. In ITMt, New York contained ."ilO.OOO free persons, less 
than Virginia by 22t;,000. In 1&40, New York contained 2,4i'.t,O01, more than 
Virginia by 1 ,C.,(h,oo(J; the excess of New York tar exceeding the whole popula- 
tion of Virginia. In 17'.iO, Pennsylvania contained fi 1,000 free persons, more 
than South Carolina by 292,000. In ISlO, it had more than South Carolina by 
l,l.'j7,0(M) In 1^00, Tennessee, settled earlier tiian Ohio, had more free persons 
than the latter In I7,ooi). In Is 10, Ohio had more than Tennessee by s73,000 ; the 
excess of Ohio far exceeding the whole popul ition of Tennessee. These statistics 
abundantly show the cmn par.it ive merits of Ireednm and slavery ; and they |)rove that 
Maryland, without it, would have escaped its exhausting influences, to be renovated 
by freedom ; would have advanced continually, and now have been far in advance of 
its present condition. But without the drain of new Territory, the slave popula- 



59 

tion of Maryland would have been far more numerous now, than in 18!0, its 
period of greatest number. Yes. But without such drain on the continent, the 
slave holders, long since overburdened with a population that was eating out their 
substance, would have sought a drain abroad, and thus have extinguished their 
own slavery, instead of transferring its increase to other regions, and keeping 
most of the original stock for the abominations of slave-breeding Slavery in 
Maryland having become unprofitable in agriculture, most of its profits are now 
derived from slave-breeding; and while new regions offer a market, this abomi- 
nation will be maintained, perhaps for another century, though Maryland will 
eventually become a free State, through the renovating process already described. 
The same renovating process has begun in Virginia, its slaves in IS 10 being less 
than in 1830, by 22,000. And it will proceed in each Old State, till it is liberated 
from slavery. But as the process begins only when slave labor ceases to be pro- 
fitable, and as alter its commencement, slavery is still maintained for the profits 
of slave-breeding, the opening of each new Territory to slavery, prolongs its life 
in each Old State, and gives it a term of life from infancy to old age in each new. 
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, are the present breed- 
ing States. But before they cease to be so, slave-breeding will begin in South 
Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri. And thus so long as new Territories be 
opened to slavery, will each Slave State pass through these transitions of slave- 
cultivation with profit, slave-cultivation without profit, slave-breeding, and ex- 
tinction of slavery, till the institution reaches the Isthmus of Panama. And then 
it will end in unconditional emancipation, or foreign colonization. 

What then is the value of the propagandist argument, that, opening new Ter- 
ritories to slavery will extirpate it from Maryland. Virginia, Kentucky, or other 
old States ? Under this proce.ss, each of them becomes a Free State by the creation 
of three or four Slave States, while its own deliverance is delayed by the slave 
breeding caused by the new creation; the grand results being the prolongation of 
slavery in old States, and its establishment in new. Wherever it is newly born, it 
must live through its natural life, while the new birth infuses new vigor into its 
decaying members in old regions. It seems like some species of polypus described 
by naturalists, from which any number of pieces may be cut and transplanted, 
while the youth of the parent stock is renewed by the excision. A shorter, safer, 
surer mode of destroying it, is fencing it round with an impassable wall, excepting 
an outlet for foreign and free colonization. Some will say that African coloniza- 
tion is a delusion ; scarcely 20,000 colored persons having been deported in .30 years. 
But how numerous was the English population of Massachusetts, in .30 years from 
the landing at Plymouth .' Or of Virginia after the same lapse from the landing at 
Jamestown .' And what appears now from these poor beginnings 1 The colonists 
have conquered the greatest difficulty in making a settlement; and that settlemenl 
would soon become a mighty community, to civilize the Continent of Africa, it the 
Slave States, becoming intolerably burdened with slavery for want of drains at 
home, should be compelled to seek them abroad. An easy and speedy remedy for 
slavery would be found in a vigorous prosecution of foreign colonization, and the 
closing of all domestic drains will force the Slave States to this vigorous prosecution. 
But these are not all the evils llowing from the extension of slavery. Under the 
Constitution, the militia of all the States may be called out to suppress insurrec- 
tions; and against a formidable insurrection of slaves, the citizens of the Free 
States are not only bound to aid their Southern brethren, but would aid them with 
alacrity. But if some dozen or twenty Slave States be added to the Union, the 
probabilities of insurrection would augment, and the burden upon the Free States 
would augment in proportion. And with the extension increases the danger of 
collision between the Free and Slave States. If the Slave States become numerous 
enough to control the Federal Government, the Free States may expect very strin- 
gent acts of Cons;ress for the re-capture of fugitive slaves As color is no defence 
against such claims, for even whites, born in Germany, without one drop of African 
blood, have been sold and held to slavery in Louisiana, and have claimed emanci- 
pation before its Courts, what may one day prevent slave-holders from entering 
any Free State with their witnesses, and establishing a claim to the white children 
of its citizens, before a mere Federal justice of the peace, or deputy post-master, 
appointed by some slave-holding President .' We have already seen the constitu- 
tional sovereignty of the Union invaded, and its maritime laws trampled upon, by 
some of the States, in the impressment and imprisonment, because they were Afri- 
cans, of persons sailing under the sanctity of the American flag, and owning the 
immunities of citizenship in other States. And with the extension of slavery in- 
creases the danger of collision with other nations. The Slave States have not only 
attempted to involve the Federal Government in controversies wit'i foreign gov- 
ernments about fugitive slaves, but during a late Presidency, a Secretary of State, 
in an official dispatch to an American Minister abroad, attempted to commit the 



60 

United States as the champion of slavery, against Britain as the champion of 
emancipation. Durini^ the same Presidency, a Secretary proposed an enormous 
increase of the navy duriny: peace; an augmentation attended with onerous taxa- 
tion, and ultimately designed for a defence of slavery against Britain as the advo- 
cate of emancipation. I att.ich little importance to the usual suggestions ol parti- 
zans ahout executive patronage. But as the policy of the Slave States has long 
aimed at a monopoly of this patronasie in all departments of the F'ederal Govern- 
ment, especially the militjry, I need no gift of prophecy to foresee how, and for 
what purposes, with large slive-holdin-j majorities in Congress, this patronage 
would be used. Southern politicians say that slavery, a mere domestic institution, 
is no aflair of the Free States, and that thtir interference with it, of whatever char- 
acter, for whatever [)urpi>se, is inexcusable. But if, through the anjimentation of 
Slave States, slavery becomes a national interest, and the Federal Government its 
champion, and the people be burdened with an enormous Southern navy to defend 
slave coasts and seek quarrels fur employment, especially against all advocates of 
emancipation, it will become the er/fatr of the I-'ree States under rather imperative 
circumstances, and their interference will have some apology. 

But an evil tar more grievous to the P'ree .States, which makes slavery their 
affair still more seriously, remains to be mentioned. The propagandists say that, 
if slaves cannot be carried to the Territories x-i property, their owners are virtu- 
ally excluded from all share in the natit)nal domain. But if slaves can be carried 
to the Territories ds property, how complete is the e.xcUision of the Free States ! 
The chief source of the progress, the civilization, the prosperity, the security 
of the Free States, is found in the subdivision of land. The yeomanry of New 
England, of the Middle and Northwestern States, each owning his freehold of 
moderate extent, are a class who can never be enslaved, and will never submit to 
any other rule than democratic republicanism. And this subdivision of land is 
the chief source of liberty in Holland, in Belgium, in Switzerland, and offers the 
best guarantee for the security of republicanism in France. All European his- 
tory proves that liberty is safe under extensive subdivision of land among owners, 
and cannot exist among landed aristocracies. Where shall we find the main pillar 
of despotism in Russia.' Where the explanation of Poland's fall .' Of Ireland's 
misery. In landed aristocracy. What has wrought the debt, the poverty, the 
misrule of England .' Landed aristocracy. What, immediately after the general 
peace of Iblo, opened the door to those reformations in Prussia which have 
ended in the recent revolution ? The liberation of land from aristocracy. What 
was one of the tirst reformations accomplished by the recent revolution in Aus- 
tria.' Preparation fur the destruction of landed aristocracy. The history of 
Europe for m>ire than twenty-live hundred years, is a history of miseries, 
social and political, flowing from landed aristocracy But slavery and landed 
aristocracy are co-relative terms; for landed aristocracy inevitably produces vir- 
tual slavery, and slavery cannot exist without landed aristocracy. The .Slave 
States are regions of landed aristocarcy; and if their colored population could be 
removed, and laws should jiromote the accumulation of land, the end would be the 
slavery of the white majority, as among the i)auper tenantry of Ireland, or the 
serfs of Russia and Russian Poland. How is land divided in the Slave States .' 
Not as in the Free, in farms of hundreds of acres or less, owned by the holders 
of the plough and the sickle ; but in plantations of thousands and tens of thousands 
of acres, tilled by those who do not own themselves. Who apply to the land 
offices in Slave States and Territories .' The rich, monopolizing their thou- 
sands and tens of thousands of acres. And who throng the land ollices of the 
Free States and Territories .' Tlie poor, the men of moderate means, whose 
capital is their talent, their enterprise, their industry, their integrity, their as- 
piration, and who buy their sections, and half and quarter sections. Then if 
the doors of a territory be opened to slavery, they are virtually closed against the 
hardy sons of the Free States, seeking, with their scanty means, the indepen- 
dence found on a small farm. And they are virtually rinsed against the toil- 
worn sons of Europe, flying from the degradation of feud.d bondage to the dignity 
of an .American tanner. Ihit the landed aristocracy of the slave-holders pro- 
duces results yet more dejilorable, in a class of free po|)ulation, whose igno- 
rance, whose debasement is scarcely conceivable by a Northern imagination, 
untravelled in Scuthern regions The Pine Barrens and Sand Hills will explain 
my meaning. " In the sweat of thy face siialt thon eat bread." And when this 
comiiiaiid went Ibrth, (Jixl stamped labor with the dignity of duty. But the 
slave holder stamps labor with the stigma of degradation. Will the hardy sons 
of the Free States, carrying abroad their talents and their as|>irations, sit beside 
" the wliip-galleu slave," content to bear as their ignominy, what God had made 
their honor .' Will they endure the brand of infamy, arrogantly imposed by the 
slave holder, for that honorable toil which makes the wilderness blossom as the 
rose, and rears every fabric of civilization .' Will the sons of Europe, flying 



61 

from feudal slavery to this boasted land of equal rights, seek the fertile fields 
where landed aristocracy exhibits features far more revolting, and rattles chains far 
more galling, than the Old World has witnessed for centuries ? Toil produces 
all the wealth of the world ; and the proud sons of the Free States, the emanci- 
pated sons of Europe, will not, and should not pursue that toil which is their 
glory, amid associations which make it their shame. They will not go where 
slavery shows its polluting presence. They will not expose their children and 
their children's children to such deplorable contingencies. They will not say 
that the only choice of a freeman in a Slave State, shall be landed monopoly, or 
landless degradation. If then, the extension of slavery to a new Territory vir- 
tually closes its doors upon the children of the Free States and of Europe, have 
the Free States no interest in the question.' And if the Territories be the com- 
mon property of the Union, shall less than six millions close them against more 
than twelve millions of the same Union, and against continually augmenting 
legions from Europe .' But while slavery closes a Territory against immigration 
from the Free States and Euroi^e, the interdiction of slavery does not close it 
against immigration from the Slave States The citizens of the Free States will 
not dwell with it, and the citizens of the Slave States can do better without it. 
Then on which side of the question is justice ? 

Yet in the face of all these facts, and probabilities, almost certainties, do 
" Northern men with Southern principles," men to whom the witty and eccentric 
John Randolph might have ascribed a list of " seven principles, five loaves and 
two fishes," who say to themselves, 

" Men must now learn with pity to dispense; 
For policy sits above conscience ;" 

intent on some ephemeral scheme of personal aggrandizement, tell the Free States 
that, yielding to the demands of the South for the extension of slavery, is not 
only due to the " compromises of the Constitution," but will be harmless, nuga- 
tory in practice ! If such men do not see the shallowness of such pretensions, 
and yet prize a decent reputation with posterity, 1 say to each of them, 



get thee glass eyes ; 



And like a scurvy politician, seem 
To see the things thou ilost not." 

Are the Free States satisfied with this prospect .' Will they surrender them- 
selves to all the conditions, all the policy, which the entire preponderance of the 
Slave States would impose upon them .' Let the history of the past furnish an 
answer ! But will the Free States, by arresting the march of slavery, dissolve this 
glorious Union, and convert its two fragments into implacable enemies .' Never ! 
Our Southern brethren are quite too sagacious, too enlightened upon their interests, 
too conscious of their comparative weakness, to tempt the fate to which separation 
would infallibly impel them. Slavery never yet failed to drag an empire down to 
ruin, and never will ; and our Southern brethren understand this too well to quit, 
for its sake, the fraternal protection of the Free States. I will not depict the 
horrors of the strife that would inevitably follow the dissolution of this fraternal 
Union into hostile fragments. Let me merely proclaim, with prophetic voice, the 
extinction of slavery in blood, and of Southern nationality in conquest or 
unqualified submission ! Should this awful step be taken now, what would be 
the relative strength of the parties .' The Free States and Territories now contain 
twelve millions of whites, and the Slave States and Territories about five millions 
and a half of whites, and three millions of slaves I institute no comparison 
between the Free and Slave States in military qualifications. The American is a 
brave soldier everywhere, and the heroism of North, South, East, West, is bril- 
liantly inscribed on every page of American military history. But when less than 
six millions meet twelve millions of a kindred race in mortal strife, as enemies 
from abroad, and three millions of another race as enemies at home, the latter 
with a long account of wrongs to settle, what are the chances of the minority? 
Fifteen against six ! Two and a half against one ! I will leave the most dauntless 
hero of the South, and no land is more fertile in heroism, to solve the problem ! 

And even if each fragment of the severed Confederacy should maintain its 
nationality, can we be blind to the incidents of this condition ? If we can. History 
addresses us in vain, and we are still in political darkness, with the light of fourteen 
centuries flashing in our path. Following Europe, from the dissolution of the 
Roman Empire in the middle of the Fifth Century, down to the general peace in 
1816, we find a continual succession of military despotisms, and of wars for the 
acquisition of territory. Ever since the dissolution of the Roman Empire into 
contiguous nations, each has been compelled to raise a military barrier against its 
neighbors, and to endure the consequences in military monarchies, feudal or stand- 
ing armies, the poverty and degradation of the masses, lawless aggressions, and 



62 

bloody, (lesolatinfr, demoralizing wars. And not only has every European nation 
endured these burdens during fourteen centuries, but each ol them, during the 
same period, has maintained a barrier of commercial restraints, interposing nume- 
rous and vexatious obstacles to all intercourse between its subjects and the rest of 
the world. How far could an American, even in the middle of this Nineteenth 
Century, before the recent revolutions, travt4 over Continental Europe, without 
finding a frontier, a custom house, vexatious examinations of his effects, vexatious 
demands of |)as«ports or fees, and military power to enforce them r And what do 
all these things indicate, but that mutual jealousy, mutual fear among contiguous 
nations, which keep them continually armed for conflicts, continually watching 
against mischievous designs ? Once all Southern and Western Europe had a com- 
munity of language, laws, customs, and governinent. But when the Roman 
Empire fell in its rottenness. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, 
Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Turks, rose upon its ruins, to visit each other, for 
fourteen centuries, with mutual vexation and slaughter. With all its vices, the 
Roman rule was ali.iost Paradise, in comparison with the bloody anarchy which 
followed its fall. 

Is all tliis no warning to the United States .' If history, as a great man of Eng- 
land once said, be " philosophy teaching by example," shall we close our eyes and 
ears against its lessons .' Our Confederacy covers more than half of the continent ; 
and every American can travel over a greater extent than all Europe, and still be 
at home. And while in every step of his progress, from the Lakes to the Gulf of 
Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacitic, he sees not the semblance of a govern- 
ment, yet he is continually under the protection of some State government, to all 
of wjfiose immunities he is constitutionally entitled, and of one overshadowing 
national authority. And vs hile he proceeds among millions and millions of human 
beings, he encounters no Englishmen, no Frenchmen, no Germans, no Italians, 
no communities watching each other in mutual fear, and harassing each other 
with mutual rancor and ferocity. All that he meets are Americans by birth or 
choice, his countrymen, his compatriots ! And every step of his progress 
is in his own country ! What a glorious picture is this, in contrast 
with the horrors flowing from European subdivision of nationality I Shall 
we then, with such contrast before our eyes, close them, and rush blindly 
into the fires that have so long desolated the Old World ? We dread standing 
armies as hostile to popular rights. Can national subdivision exist on the same 
continent without military governments and standing armies.' And can military 
governments and standing armies be maintained without the slavery, ignorance, 
and degradation of the masses .- For fourteen centuries, Europe has written the 
answer in tears and blood I Let us read the answer and beware I But this doc- 
trine involves the accession of the Northern British Colonies, and the whole of 
Mexico. Be it so. Such is destiny ! Without the slightest relerence to the 
Mexican war, or to the present condition of these Colonies, 1 say that sooner or 
later, such union must come. According to natural laws, whicli GikI made and 
man cannot repeal, the Anglo-American race, stronger in mind and body than 
the feeble Indian or the degenerate Spanisli Creole, will linally overrun, over- 
power, absorb, and extirpate the Mexican, even without Ibrce, even by phy- 
sical, moral, and intellectual superiority in all the art and science of peace. And 
every F>nglish colony is also subject to immutable laws, which enable iis to fore- 
tell its destiny as certainly as the rising of the sun. Whenever English colonists 
leave their fatherland, they carry abroad the high aspirations and indomitable 
perseverance of their race, and tiie Common Law, the great charter of social and 
political freedom. Englislunen cannot be slaves, even during their colonial de- 
pendence, and will certainly achieve nationality when able to go alone. And 
when the British North American Colonies shall reach that consummation, de- 
creed lor them in the Book of Destiny as certainly as it was decreed for The 
Ol.u Thirtkkn, they will have the alternative of fencing against an invincible 
neighbor in separate nationidity, or of entering the family ol that neighbor, secure 
against the rest of the world. 1 leave the choice to English intelligence, look- 
ing through the European vista of fourteen centuries, and securely rely upon a 
choice in wisdom. 

With some politicians. Northern and Southern, a favorite position is " No 
more territory." Do they comprehend the p;ist : .\nd througli the past can they 
see the future .' Oris their vision bounded by tliis little present ; What ship 
is that .' A frail h.irU, bearing a few housi'lcss. homeless, shivering exiles to the 
snow-clad rock of Plymouth I Little mor»' than two centuries ago, the savage 
war whoop burst upon tlie slumbei-s of this little band of adventurers, while the 
savage war club was raisetl against the leader of a little band of kindred adventu- 
rers at Jamestown. Where are those savajje tribes now r Gone I lor ever gone, 
beneath those immutable laws which give the dominion of the earth to 



63 

physical, moral, and intellectual superiority ! And what traces of their 
sojourn in this wide wilderness of sa' ape beasts and savage men, have been 
left by the poor adventurers of Plymouth and Jamestown? THE UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA! That mighty nation which makes the remain- 
ing kings of Europe tremble on their tottering thrones, and shows to it5 w;ar- 
worn, down-trodden multitudes the certainty of their emancipation fi^om 
feudal bondage. No more territory ! Behold the United States of America 
now ; and then go back to Plymouth and Jamestown when first reached by 
those few scores of English adventurers ; and then ask if anything human could 
have repressed the energies or restrained the triumphant march of Anglo- 
Saxon superiority! No more territory! Go back but a few years, and behold 
acquisitions far exceeding in extent, the Old Thirteen that established our nation- 
ality. See Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minisota, Nebraska, 
Oregon, regions yet unnamed, and destined to teem with our own kindred, added 
to the "original States" within less than fifty years! No more territory! As 
well might we attempt to dam the Mississippi, to make the mad Missouri retrace 
its course, as to restrain the overflowing of that physical, moral and intellectual 
torrent, Anglo-Saxon superiority ! With his axe in one hand and the Common 
Law in the other, the Anglo-Saxon goes forth to the certainty of dominion over 
all other races on this Continent, to the certainty of freedom, civilization and pro- 
gress. And as soon may we expect the Ocean to lie still at our bidding, as the 
Anglo-Saxon to stand still under the blind theories and short-sighted resolutions 
of ephemeral politicians. And as his march must be onward, we have the alter- 
native of sending the Federal Constitution with him, to bind him to us as a friend 
and a brother, or of letting him go forth as our rival and our enemy under sepa- 
rate nationality. But the Southern Statesmen are a little longer-sighted than the 
politicians of the Free States. If a resolution of '• no more territory" pass both 
Houses of Congress, and be signed by a Slave holding President, how many 
years will elapse before a horde of adventurers from all parts of the Union will 
break into some Northern State of Mexico, and with or without its own white 
population, establish another Texas .' And how soon alter the independence of 
this new Slave State shall have been hastily acknowledged by a slave holding 
President, will it knock at the doors of the Union for admission : And what then 
will become of your new " Missouri Compromise" about " No more territory ?" It 
will be forgotten or revoked amid the ephemeral turmoil of a Presidential election, 
while the neti) State, with flying colors, aye ! and the black and red banner of 
slavery, will proudly, arrogantly march into the Confederacy ! And such in suc- 
cession will be the history of every Mexican and Central American State, down 
to Panama, if the Free States are content with the poor-spirited suicide of" No more 
territory !" Will the Free States consent to be like Isachar, a strong ass, and stupidly 
take and patiently bear every burden laid on them by the " Chivalry of the South .'" 
Will they, with the microscopic vision of an ant, detect and creep over the mi- 
nutest spot on the surface of a dollar, when they ought, with the glance of an 
eagle looking down from the clouds, to survey the wide plains and Alpine heights 
of this vast Continent, and to comprehend the mighty moral interests of which it 
is yet but the cradle ? The long-sighted Statesmen of the Old World, who think 
for centuries in advance, say that na//oJis never die. But if the United States 
adopt for a political axiom, " No more Territory," they will die the death of sui- 
cide, the suicide of idiocy ! Those who would ofl'er " No more Territory" as a 
political axiom of Anglo-Saxons on the North American Continent, are fit States- 
men for Lilliput. 

Our Southern brethren comprehend all this. And while they threaten separa- 
tion to alarm the patriotic fears of the Free States, they foresee too plainly the 
result, to rush upon the awful suicide. No! If the march of slavery be stayed, they 
will 7iot leave the Union. They will then cling to it as the sheet anchor of all 
their earthly hopes, and it will then be stronger than ever. Finding an impassa- 
ble wall raised around their slavery, excepting for colonization abroad, finding 
it extinct as an element of political power, they will seriously begin to provide 
for its extinction as a social institution. No longer an element of political power, 
it will no longer be what it has been during sixty years, an element of political 
mischief, a perpetual disturbance, a provocative to " envy, hatred and malice, 
and all uncharitableness," of" privy conspiracy and rebellion," of " false doctrine, 
heresy and schism." And then its evil, mischief-making voice will be no longer 
heard in our national halls ; and East, West, North and South, relieved of its ma- 
lignant influences, will be bound faster than ever in the bonds of fraternity, and as 
we fervently hope, will so remain, one and indivisible, E Pluribus Unurn, even 
till 

" The great ginbe itself shall dissolve, 

And like the baseless fabric of a vision, 

Leave not a wreck behind." 



04 

Howsiiall the Free Stites averf ti-' .l.-nrv to which the preponderance of 
' the Slave States would infallibly so Kr,t by interference with slaverv 

within its present limits. Not b\ ( the pr-'sent rt^Jations ot any Slave 

Sta( • N -it bv jny txerciso of tht coiiitilui. ...al power in Consrreas.to prohibit the 
domestic slave trade among existiiig Slave States. Wherever slavery now e.xists, 
there let it be left to the exclusive control of State authority, in the Old Thirteen 
States under their reserved sovereignty, in the New States under Conzressional 
concessions and compacts. Sound policy should restrain the Free States from pro- 
hibiting the domestic slave trade among the present Slave States; for this is the 
drain through which Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky will become Free States, 
by transferring their portion of the plague to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, 
Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Te.xas. Then leaving slavery where and as 
they now find it, fated to die under the immutable physical and moral laws which 
it violates, and which therefore insure its destruction, the Free .States can avert 
their threatened destiny by utiion, by cordial co-operation, against the extension of 
slavery over another sijnare mile ol territory. They are the strongest now. The 
sixteen Free States, including Delaware, have thirty two senators and not less than 
one hundred and thirty-eight representatives, while the tourteen Slave States have 
twenty-eight senators and eighty. nine representatives. Under God, the destiny of 
the Free States is now in their own hands! May God inspire them with wis- 
dom and virtue adeijuate to the crisis ( 

And in addition to their interests, have the Free States no character at issue? 
In the Convention of nS7, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, 
then and still Slave States, nobly vindicated their character as advocates of 
human rights, by opposing even a temporary toleration of the slave trade, by 
securinii (or the Federal Government, even upon the hard condition of this tempo- 
rary toll-ration, the ultimate and S(ieedily accruing power to suppress it entirely, 
and by gladly looking forward to the extirpation of slavery from every portion of 
the Union. In those days of disinterested |)atrioti3m and expansive philanthropy. 
South Carolina and Georgia stood alone as the champions of injustice and oppres- 
sion, deaf to the imploring cries of sufit^ring humanity. If Maryland, Virginia, 
and North Carolina, afterwards fell from the grace which then adorned them, and 
have become, tlirough the contaminating influences of the slave market, the zealous 
advocates of wrong, the guilt, the odium, the censure of their seduction, their cor- 
ruption, lie heaviest on South Carolina and Georgia ; for upon them will impartial 
posterity fix the stain. And the day will come when South Carolina and Georgia 
will bitterly ref)ent the cupidity which made thetn prefer separation, foreign 
alliance and civil war, to relinquishing the wages of oppression ; and when they 
will feel that all the gold which they have extracted from the manacles of 
slavery, is worthless dross, dust and bitter ashes, in comparison witli the character 
which they lost in 1"S7. Will the Free States, with their present ample power 
to vindicate the inalienable rights of man, to stay the plague of slavery from in- 
fecting and polluting for centuries, the rest of the Union or the rest of the Conti- 
nent, follow the example of South Carolina and Georgia.' Will they become 
deaf to the voice of justice and humanity, and sacrifice their solemn duties to 
God, to themselves, to posterity, for some temporary interest of the day, some 
ephemeral object of partisan policy, or for gold, that " yellow stone " that 

" Will knit and lirenk relipinns. bless the HccurseJ ; 
.M;ik(! the hour leprosy iidoreil ; |)litce lliicvea, 
Anil give Iheiu title, knee unci iipprobution, 
Willi tSenutora on the bench V 

Let them remember that a future will come, when an impartial posterity will 
return upon their conduct a righteous verdict, and place them beside South 
Carolina and (Jeorgia, the willing oppressors of their fellow men for centuries! 
The willing champions of lawless power! The willing formers of fetters, 
manacles, and chains! When that day comes, and come it tvHl if they are recre- 
ant to their duties now, like the conscience stricken Cain they will cry out, and 
cry in vain, •' Our |)unisment is greater than we can bear 1" 



46 



.0^ 
























■a? .<- 






'i>, 






-^^^^ 






.^^ 















-.s^' 






^Ji 
-\^' 









u-2 



Saw * w "% *% 






^* .>^ ^^^ --^K* ^^ ^^ 



'^■■, 



V\ERT 
BOOKBINDING 

Grants, He, Pa 
Jan fet 1989 













.^q. 



.^^ 






^^-^^^ 



